Consequentialism, Utilitarianism and how it affects veganism

[aba4w]

Virtue ethics can be a form of rule consequentialism, you may want to look into the latter. That's generally the best way of looking at consequentialism because most people are capable of employing flawed case by case reasoning to justify whatever they want even if that reasoning is logically inconsistent and based on information we should know is bad.

For instance, many consequentialists may attempt to justify meat eating by arguing about the higher price of vegan alternatives or how they'd suffer without meat and try to minimize harm to animals by diminishing their levels of sentience or cherry picking other facts.
But as a rule, we should act in accordance with how the world should become and err on the side of harm avoidance where it's possible without trying to over-analyze the cost and benefit. This rule actually does make sense if you understand basic economics and psychology, but you have to have some not insignificant knowledge in those areas (not just pop knowledge) to correctly apply classical consequentialism and most people simply do not have that understanding -- and so those people will tend to employ cognitive errors and wishconceptions to do harm and justify it under a twisted version of consequentialism.

In what topics of psychology and economics should one look further to understand that better? Of course I know things like biases, motivated reasoning and things like that.

I used to be a rule based utilitarian. Is that the consensus in this forum, or is "consequentialism" something broader here, where other things than happiness and suffering are considered?

When it comes to rule based utilitarianism in any case, I have several issues with it.

For starters I don't like certain thought experiments in a vacuum where rule based reasoning doesn't apply (for example if only two people exist and one is a rapist who gets much more happiness out of raping than the victim suffers somehow)

Also thought experiments like torture vs dust specks"

Or on a more practical level (and therefore more important), I also dislike the "repugnant conclusion", which I believe makes it harder to argue for veganism in countries where animal welfare regulations gradually improve.

A more deontic framework where you say that sentient beings have certain rights seems much crisper here, although of course that might be less intuitive than "suffering bad". At least you can use strategies like "name the trait" to bolster it.

Utilitarianism (perhaps even with rule-based utilitarianism) also seems to have certain other entailments I'm not sure I'm comfortable with or even comfortable sharing, for example when it comes to human welfare and how it affects meat consumption.

Not overanalyzing the cost and benefit in order to avoid biases is perhaps a good approach, however analysing (with more or less rigor) is what effective altruists tend to do.
There seems to be a good amount of people in these spaces that don't consider veganism cost-effective, and argue the impact of going vegan can easily be "offset" by donations.

At the moment I think I'm preferring "treshold deontology", maybe also virtue ethics, but I don't think I've found something that feels 100% right or I need to look further into it.

[brimstoneSalad]

In what topics of psychology and economics should one look further to understand that better? Of course I know things like biases, motivated reasoning and things like that.

Your best bet is probably to take some classes on the subjects. Some are available online for free. If you don't understand something specific, though, you can ask here.
The trouble with classical models is that they can idealize human reason and knowledge in a way that doesn't apply to reality for most people; believing too much in ones own ability to reason about moral issues can be problematic without more formal knowledge. People are liable to commit fallacies, cherry pick information, an otherwise skew the results due to bias into what they want to do for hedonic reasons (like consuming meat). Erring against hedonism is a good rule to help avoid that, but there you have a virtue-ethics rule consequentialism kind of basis for the average person.

It's very much like the difference between pop science and professional science practice. The former should just stick to listening to the experts instead of deciding on their own from "doing their own research" that the Earth is flat or whatever else. Except, in the case of philosophy, there's another layer of error because sound deduction relies not only on the truth of the premises (which science informs) but also on valid reasoning (where people are prone to fallacies). Logic is very much a kind of mathematical practice which can be formally validated, but most people fail at that.

I used to be a rule based utilitarian. Is that the consensus in this forum, or is "consequentialism" something broader here, where other things than happiness and suffering are considered?

Standard Utilitarianism is hedonic and considers self interest equally in decision making. Here the consensus is:

1. Preference (not simply perceived experience of pleasure vs. pain). This avoids "pleasure pill" or "pleasure machine" scenarios in which you're hooked up to something that stimulates your pleasure centers and dulls your pain leaving you in an otherwise mindless stupor. People want authentic experiences and have interests beyond their experiences (like the parent wanting a child to survive and do well even if the parent dies and can not experience it).

2. Altruism. The pleasure the rapist experiences for himself (or herself I suppose) doesn't count toward a good that said rapist is doing in the world. Neither does the taste pleasure of a person eating meat mean that person is doing something good in the world. It's your affect on OTHERS, not for yourself, that counts. People already have self-interest as part of their motivational structures, we don't need to double-count it by giving them morality points for acting selfishly. Morality is what lies beyond self interest and informs our actions to others. This is axiomatic.

Or on a more practical level (and therefore more important), I also dislike the "repugnant conclusion", which I believe makes it harder to argue for veganism in countries where animal welfare regulations gradually improve.

People apply intuition poorly to that scenario, which is an issue with people trying to use intuition in lieu of reason on morality.
Animal welfare would have to become something unrecognizably high to even come close to that, and even higher when you account for preference instead of hedonic experience (hedonism which ignores the harms of death in itself/being eaten which is likely not the preference of the animal).
You also have to factor in resource use and opportunity cost. You'll find it appears impossible when properly considered.

A more deontic framework where you say that sentient beings have certain rights seems much crisper here, although of course that might be less intuitive than "suffering bad". At least you can use strategies like "name the trait" to bolster it.

Intuition doesn't have anything to do with it, but deontology has no valid foundation in reason.

Not overanalyzing the cost and benefit in order to avoid biases is perhaps a good approach, however analysing (with more or less rigor) is what effective altruists tend to do.
There seems to be a good amount of people in these spaces that don't consider veganism cost-effective, and argue the impact of going vegan can easily be "offset" by donations.

This is the kind of misuse of consequentialist analysis I'm talking about. They'll also drastically underestimate the cost of offsetting which is hard to do to any meaningful degree due to the problem of virtue theft (putting money into vegan advocacy is the most effective, but people are not going vegan in order that another person may eat more meat and claim that good for themselves).

There are rules that can help define cases where offsetting is acceptable.

At the moment I think I'm preferring "treshold deontology", maybe also virtue ethics, but I don't think I've found something that feels 100% right or I need to look further into it.

Deontology doesn't work in any capacity due to logical flaws at its foundation, and moral systems can't be selected arbitrarily based on preference -- that negates the whole point of it if whoever can choose whatever to be moral based on personal intuition.
Consequentialism is based strictly on reasoning, which is why it may not always align with everybody's intuition 100%. That doesn't mean it's wrong.
Virtue ethics which receives its authority from (and defines its virtues with) rule consequentialism makes sense -- specifically an altruistic preference rule consequentialism. Virtue ethics on its own without any justification for those virtues is arbitrary and not worth consideration.

[aba4w]

Your best bet is probably to take some classes on the subjects. Some are available online for free. If you don't understand something specific, though, you can ask here.
The trouble with classical models is that they can idealize human reason and knowledge in a way that doesn't apply to reality for most people; believing too much in ones own ability to reason about moral issues can be problematic without more formal knowledge. People are liable to commit fallacies, cherry pick information, an otherwise skew the results due to bias into what they want to do for hedonic reasons (like consuming meat). Erring against hedonism is a good rule to help avoid that, but there you have a virtue-ethics rule consequentialism kind of basis for the average person.

It's very much like the difference between pop science and professional science practice. The former should just stick to listening to the experts instead of deciding on their own from "doing their own research" that the Earth is flat or whatever else. Except, in the case of philosophy, there's another layer of error because sound deduction relies not only on the truth of the premises (which science informs) but also on valid reasoning (where people are prone to fallacies). Logic is very much a kind of mathematical practice which can be formally validated, but most people fail at that.

I see, thank you, do you mean on platforms like coursera?
Learning about biases, good thinking and so on seems worthwhile, but I doubt that even among people well versed in these topics there is a huge consensus on ethical questions.
If there's some rigorous treatise that takes apart certain erroneous viewpoints of ea people, I'd certainly be interested in that (if that's even possible to that degree of certainty).

Standard Utilitarianism is hedonic and considers self interest equally in decision making. Here the consensus is:

1. Preference (not simply perceived experience of pleasure vs. pain). This avoids "pleasure pill" or "pleasure machine" scenarios in which you're hooked up to something that stimulates your pleasure centers and dulls your pain leaving you in an otherwise mindless stupor. People want authentic experiences and have interests beyond their experiences (like the parent wanting a child to survive and do well even if the parent dies and can not experience it).

2. Altruism. The pleasure the rapist experiences for himself (or herself I suppose) doesn't count toward a good that said rapist is doing in the world. Neither does the taste pleasure of a person eating meat mean that person is doing something good in the world. It's your affect on OTHERS, not for yourself, that counts. People already have self-interest as part of their motivational structures, we don't need to double-count it by giving them morality points for acting selfishly. Morality is what lies beyond self interest and informs our actions to others. This is axiomatic.

Ah ok, preference seems like an important component that I've been missing, even though it makes the whole calculus thing even more complicated.

When it comes to altruism, how do you avoid becoming a slave that only lives for others, if self interest isn't a factor in the ethical system at all? Does your own preference play in here?
Self-interest will of course be a counterbalance in practice, but if it's not part of the ethical system itself that would still mean choosing yourself over others is always immoral.

People apply intuition poorly to that scenario, which is an issue with people trying to use intuition in lieu of reason on morality.
Animal welfare would have to become something unrecognizably high to even come close to that, and even higher when you account for preference instead of hedonic experience (hedonism which ignores the harms of death in itself/being eaten which is likely not the preference of the animal).
You also have to factor in resource use and opportunity cost. You'll find it appears impossible when properly considered.

I don't think there is much here that you could ground in pure reasoning
It boils down to the general problem of consequentialist theories that there isn't any objective calculi how you weigh different experiences and preference against each other, or even an objective way how you determine preferences (especially tricky when it comes to animals). So you rely mostly on intuition.
This is also why I think it's hard to argue against the repugnant hypothesis, because how you weigh everything has a certain degree of arbitrariness. Yes most farm animals and of course factory farm animals make a lot of miserable experiences, but who's to say their life as a whole isn't still a net-positive in some sense?
The only straightforward grounding I could think of here would be: "Would you personally like to live the life of an animal in factory farming"? To which the other person could just reply: "No, but that's because I'm a human, not an animal, I have higher sensibilities!"
Which is most likely phony, but you can't exactly write down a mathematical proof why they're wrong either.

When it comes to opportunity cost, do you mean the opportunity cost of the animals actually living good lives? If yes, not sure that that's a factor here, because no matter if you as a consumer buy the meat product or not, the animals that exist will have miserable lifes either way. You can contribute to lower the demand with your decision and thus the supply in the future, but that would at best mean non-existence for future animals, so not much of an opportunity cost in that sense.

This is the kind of misuse of consequentialist analysis I'm talking about. They'll also drastically underestimate the cost of offsetting which is hard to do to any meaningful degree due to the problem of virtue theft (putting money into vegan advocacy is the most effective, but people are not going vegan in order that another person may eat more meat and claim that good for themselves).

There are rules that can help define cases where offsetting is acceptable.

Some ea people hold that the most effective charities are not about vegan advocacy but rather making the life and deaths of animals less painful (see the shrimp welfare project)

Also, while I'd intuitively agree that donating for vegan advocacy is more effective if you yourself also go vegan (more vegans in society and all positive second order effects that might arise from that), it's still hard to evaluate how high an impact that really has. Or how high an impact virtue theft has on people going vegan or not, that seems to be mostly an empricial question that you can't easily reason through.

Deontology doesn't work in any capacity due to logical flaws at its foundation, and moral systems can't be selected arbitrarily based on preference -- that negates the whole point of it if whoever can choose whatever to be moral based on personal intuition.
Consequentialism is based strictly on reasoning, which is why it may not always align with everybody's intuition 100%. That doesn't mean it's wrong.
Virtue ethics which receives its authority from (and defines its virtues with) rule consequentialism makes sense -- specifically an altruistic preference rule consequentialism. Virtue ethics on its own without any justification for those virtues is arbitrary and not worth consideration.

How is consequentialism based strictly on reasoning? Doesn't it rely on axioms or assumptions just like Deontology or "pure" Virtue Ethics? I've already talked about the arbitrariness of consequentialist calculi too.
Usually when people talk about morality that is strictly grounded in reasoning they mean something like Kantianism, which is deontology (and still relies on assumptions of course)

[Red]

I see, thank you, do you mean on platforms like coursera?

Peter Singer has an introductory course to Altruism there which is a great start:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/altruism

You can probably find some stuff on Youtube but from what I can tell that may be kind of hard since the support for Preference, Altruistic consequentialism is pretty small. Not because it isn't valid, but because not many people are familiar with it (Utilitarianism seems to dominate).

Do you use ChatGPT? They recently rolled out a new Study Mode which can help you create a sort of personal course so you can learn at your own pace, if you want I can prompt it and paste it here.

Learning about biases, good thinking and so on seems worthwhile, but I doubt that even among people well versed in these topics there is a huge consensus on ethical questions.

It's hard to get a consensus in philosophy because a lot of people participating in it don't approach it with proper rigor. Just look at philosophy professors and how often they make dumb as hell arguments.

If there's some rigorous treatise that takes apart certain erroneous viewpoints of ea people, I'd certainly be interested in that (if that's even possible to that degree of certainty).

It is possible, if you apply logic and reason instead of speculation like a lot of academics do.

When it comes to altruism, how do you avoid becoming a slave that only lives for others, if self interest isn't a factor in the ethical system at all? Does your own preference play in here?

Depends on how you're viewing your own altruistic deeds, and it doesn't need to be viewed as complete servitude. Altruism doesn't "demand" anything, it's more of an ideal of living an ethical life. But even taking altruism to the extreme, I don't think it necessarily results in that. Think of it like Veganism; In this modern world, it's basically impossible to live without ANY animal products, but you can get closer by not consuming meat, dairy, eggs, or wearing wool/leather etc. You still might step on some insects or eat a product that has a tiny bit of dairy, but it's the 99% that really counts.

Of course, there are some people out there who are basically saints and dedicate all their time and effort towards reducing suffering and making the world a better place, but you don't need to be this epitome of selflessness to be a good person. You do need to maintain some sort of standard in taking care of yourself, otherwise you wouldn't be able to help others. It's more, when presented with an opportunity to help others over yourself, you choose to make that decision. You vote altruistically for social programs at the cost of an increase in taxes, you donate to charities over buying some new clothes or a frivolous widget, you give up your favorite foods to cause less suffering to animals, and so on. The net consequences of your actions (provided they are well-intentioned) determine your morality. Being ahead of the curve is often all that's needed, since most people don't do much beyond the bare minimum of altruism.

You are free to live your life however you want. No one in this world is perfect, but there is no reason to not strive for it. If your net actions are altruistic, by any reasonable definition are an altruist.

Even if you go through university and licensing to get a six figure job that is helpful to society (like green engineering), donate the vast majority of your income to charity and leave only enough to sustain yourself (and your family), vote progressively and talk with your political representatives (and encouraging others to do the same), eating Vegan and avoiding environmentally harmful foods like palm oil and rice, use public transport or an EV, minimize energy use (AC, heat, warm water), and engage in animal rights advocacy, there will still be some small areas where you could be improving on. It's an exercise in futility to be 100% altruistic 100% of the time.

Self-interest will of course be a counterbalance in practice, but if it's not part of the ethical system itself that would still mean choosing yourself over others is always immoral.

I don't think it's right or useful to consider any action that is not serving others as immoral. Watching a film or playing video game is very much amoral behavior, and roughly neutral (arguably, an otherwise violent person who plays violent video games instead of actually being violent is being ethical in controlling their own behaior. Similar thing can be said for porn and lustful people).

A person who doesn't have an absolutely vital career, like musician or Youtuber, isn't automatically an unethical person.

I don't think there is much here that you could ground in pure reasoning
It boils down to the general problem of consequentialist theories that there isn't any objective calculi how you weigh different experiences and preference against each other, or even an objective way how you determine preferences (especially tricky when it comes to animals). So you rely mostly on intuition.

From my understanding, it's weighing preferences against each other. A person will have a preference to eat bacon, but the pig has a much stronger preference to not be stuck in a crate and slaughtered.

You might not be able to conclusively prove that, but you don't need all the information to make a rational conclusion. And nowadays with some pretty damn good mock meats that can easily satisfy the preference, it's even weaker.

This is also why I think it's hard to argue against the repugnant hypothesis, because how you weigh everything has a certain degree of arbitrariness. Yes most farm animals and of course factory farm animals make a lot of miserable experiences, but who's to say their life as a whole isn't still a net-positive in some sense?

But the issue is there's no good reason to think an animal who suffers their entire life has that net positive, especially since there's no hope for them to have a good life. If you stop them from being bred you bring the negative to a neutral.

The only straightforward grounding I could think of here would be: "Would you personally like to live the life of an animal in factory farming"? To which the other person could just reply: "No, but that's because I'm a human, not an animal, I have higher sensibilities!"
Which is most likely phony, but you can't exactly write down a mathematical proof why they're wrong either.

But the person who makes that argument still acknowledges the animal has some sensibilities (or preferences). These animals we slaughter are fairly intelligent; Pigs are roughly as intelligent as three year old humans, for example. The person would need to justify that keeping an animal suffering for months on end just for fifteen minutes of pleasure (when alternatives that cause MUCH less harm are readily available) is a net positive. And in any case, they are acting immoral when they consider their preferences over the preferences for the animals. Even if they were causing suffering to animals with the sentience of flies, it would still be immoral, just less so, unless that suffering leads to some greater good in the world for others.

The pathways necessary for emotion and physical sensation are homologous in vertebrates, meaning that they feel pain and suffering akin to humans. Sure, perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent, but not to the extent that their interests are negligible.

When it comes to opportunity cost, do you mean the opportunity cost of the animals actually living good lives? If yes, not sure that that's a factor here, because no matter if you as a consumer buy the meat product or not, the animals that exist will have miserable lifes either way. You can contribute to lower the demand with your decision and thus the supply in the future, but that would at best mean non-existence for future animals, so not much of an opportunity cost in that sense.

For animals on factory farms, non-existence is neutral. If an animal is not born there is no being to have a preference to be or to not be born.

Some ea people hold that the most effective charities are not about vegan advocacy but rather making the life and deaths of animals less painful (see the shrimp welfare project)

I think the idea is that one regulation improving welfare might only be a tiny reduction in suffering for an individual animal, but since there are billions of animals on farms it results in a massive net reduction.

Of course advocating for welfare improvements is important, but I think EA skirts around vegan advocacy because they don't wanna alienate too many people because there are too many people in their circle who would be offended I think. It downplays how effective one vegan advocate can be. Convincing a hundred people to eat less meat is a huge net positive, and is not particularly difficult.

Also, while I'd intuitively agree that donating for vegan advocacy is more effective if you yourself also go vegan (more vegans in society and all positive second order effects that might arise from that), it's still hard to evaluate how high an impact that really has. Or how high an impact virtue theft has on people going vegan or not, that seems to be mostly an empricial question that you can't easily reason through.

The charities reccomended by ACE tend to be very good, their effectiveness has been evaluated scientifically.
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/cha ... charities/

They also are really good climate charities, from my research they're better than most non-animal based charities. Really the best bang for your buck in terms of harm reduction in modern times (especially since a lot of stuff reccomended by GiveWell is at the point where you need like five grand to save one life).

How is consequentialism based strictly on reasoning? Doesn't it rely on axioms or assumptions just like Deontology or "pure" Virtue Ethics? I've already talked about the arbitrariness of consequentialist calculi too.
Usually when people talk about morality that is strictly grounded in reasoning they mean something like Kantianism, which is deontology (and still relies on assumptions of course)

It operates on the axiom of the Golden Rule (the defintion of Morality) and uses reason and evidence to decide what has the most positive consequences. Relying on axioms doesn't make it non-reasonable, since that's the definiton in question.

[brimstoneSalad]

I see, thank you, do you mean on platforms like coursera?
Learning about biases, good thinking and so on seems worthwhile, but I doubt that even among people well versed in these topics there is a huge consensus on ethical questions.

There are positions that the majority of moral philosophers take, a few surveys highlight those. Animal agriculture being problematic is broadly held. However, many philosophers are still erroneously Kantian with the beliefs (faith even) that the logical problems with the system will be solved. Many others are also poorly informed on science. There's limited interdisciplinary study between the sciences and philosophy, with each being famously bad at the other. Scientists often do not take philosophy seriously, and philosophers are often hundreds of years behind on sciences.

If there's some rigorous treatise that takes apart certain erroneous viewpoints of ea people, I'd certainly be interested in that (if that's even possible to that degree of certainty).

We try, but it's a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to debunking bad arguments. It takes time to go through each version one by one.

Ah ok, preference seems like an important component that I've been missing, even though it makes the whole calculus thing even more complicated.

Well I didn't say it's an easy calculus. A big problem with moral philosophy is people looking for the easy answers when all that gives people is answers that are wrong to various degrees.

When it comes to altruism, how do you avoid becoming a slave that only lives for others, if self interest isn't a factor in the ethical system at all? Does your own preference play in here?

There is what is a better state in the universe, then in terms of actions what is strictly moral to do as an individual actor with respect to others, and then there is the best moral system which is the one that extracts maximum concessions of moral action without burnout and which can still be adopted as broadly as possible. These are literal calculus. They aren't easy problems and I can't give you easy answers, but I can help point you in the right direction and maybe you'll help with some of those answers in the collective project of human moral progress.

I don't think there is much here that you could ground in pure reasoning

There is an appeal in attempt to base moral oughts on is statements via contradictions as Kant did, but it doesn't actually work and in nearly 300 years there hasn't been any real progress on it.
We start with axioms, but those axioms are presuppositional based on our use of language and participation in moral discourse.

It boils down to the general problem of consequentialist theories that there isn't any objective calculi how you weigh different experiences and preference against each other

Do you prefer a paper cut which hurts a little and heals, or a painless amputation of your middle finger under anesthetic?
Problem solved.
You can figure it out most of the time by asking as long as the subject is reasonably informed. For non-human animals the asking involves observation and some conjecture, ethology is an entire field, but it's not rocket science to figure out that animals prefer certain conditions to others and make very broad claims about those, and employ the precautionary principle as a rule when in doubt (there are strong arguments to be made for this from a moral standpoint where it regards bias prevention). We err on the side of non-intervention with animals, like not farming them, until we can prove it causes less harm than the good it does for them (which is unsurprisingly astronomically unlikely).

Err on the side of trusting people when they say what they want, employ the sciences of ethology, and use the precautionary principle.
You don't need to use intuition.

Yes most farm animals and of course factory farm animals make a lot of miserable experiences, but who's to say their life as a whole isn't still a net-positive in some sense?

People want to believe it's positive because they want to eat meat and want to feel good about it -- where the biases align there is clear, as is the precautionary principle as it applies to those animals. Humans should leave animals alone in the wild unless there's overwhelming evidence to the good of the contrary.
As it stands the argument to their misery based on behavior is extremely strong. If there were a tiny margin of good (which there's no reason to believe) from the animals' experiences, the economic and environmental arguments against it are very strong -- it would be the most resource inefficient way to bring that sliver of net good experience into the world, and the harmful knock-on effects to human flourishing and to wild animals would more than outweigh that for a net harm.

The only straightforward grounding I could think of here would be: "Would you personally like to live the life of an animal in factory farming"? To which the other person could just reply: "No, but that's because I'm a human, not an animal, I have higher sensibilities!"
Which is most likely phony, but you can't exactly write down a mathematical proof why they're wrong either.

It doesn't need to be proof to not do it. It's one of many reasonable heuristics which say not to do it.

For lack of definitive evidence (and the evidence on the side of harm to animals from said farming) extrapolating from the closest known experience is reasonable to get as close as we can. These aren't just arbitrary conjectures, it's based on reason and it's all we have.

When it comes to opportunity cost, do you mean the opportunity cost of the animals actually living good lives?

No, of literally anything else those resources and that land could be used for.

There are better arguments for ocean fishing, because it's a net source of resources for humanity (though not currently done sustainably). Not for animal agriculture, though, even in a hypothetical.

Some ea people hold that the most effective charities are not about vegan advocacy but rather making the life and deaths of animals less painful (see the shrimp welfare project)

Differences in efficacy of different outreach are another matter. The bottom line is that offsetting such easily avoidable and large harms is very suspect, and most offsetting when you use it to justify harms you could have easily avoided otherwise is going to result in virtue theft.

Or how high an impact virtue theft has on people going vegan or not, that seems to be mostly an empricial question that you can't easily reason through.

Virtue theft isn't about people not going vegan, it's about people who go vegan believing they're doing good but are actually not doing any better than when they were eating meat because the other person is claiming credit for all of their reductions -- and THAT theft of virtue is in itself a harm that you're doing to them. That harm apparently cancels out the supposed good you've claimed under some kind of conservation principle.

If you get zero points for being vegan and you're still a bad person, and the other person gets to eat meat and claim all of the credit, there are a number of fundamental problems with that kind of calculus. So too are there problems with some kind of double counting calculus. It doesn't work. The claim you get for getting people to go vegan is modest, and frankly you do it because you want the world to be a better place because you're a genuinely good person and not looking to maximize moral points so that you can do more harm personally (if you ARE a genuinely good person, then you go vegan too).
It's more of a question of whether people want to play a math game to "win" at something, or if they're genuinely good people.

Offsetting is problematic when it occurs before the point where you could do primary harm reduction. As a rule, don't offset harm you choose to do by trying to get other people to stop doing the same harm that you refuse to avoid. And particularly don't appeal to their virtues to get them to stop.

How is consequentialism based strictly on reasoning? Doesn't it rely on axioms or assumptions just like Deontology or "pure" Virtue Ethics? I've already talked about the arbitrariness of consequentialist calculi too.
Usually when people talk about morality that is strictly grounded in reasoning they mean something like Kantianism, which is deontology (and still relies on assumptions of course)

Any arbitrary so called subjective "morality" is a system of values, which is oughts or preferences about the world around a sentient being (the only beings that can hold preferences), objective morality can really only be the weighted sum of all such systems -- which is, consideration for the interests of anything that can have them.

That gets you to preference consequentialism, and you can get there reasoning from axioms based on the root concepts involved -- things that really have to be presupposed in any relevant discussion.

In personal evaluation, some kind of altruism just stands to reason to avoid double counting.
It's not novel, considerations for the interests of others is just the golden rule.

This avoids the is-ought problem Deontology tries to bridge.
You build a brick house out of bricks. You build an objective system of oughts out of consideration for all of those preferences with respect to how strongly they are held. Ought to ought.

This is not the hard problem. The hard problems are the calculus of the optimal moral systems in practice, and therein the derivation of rules that avoid cognitive biases. Getting from altruistic preference consequentialism to some kind of formulation of virtue ethics is the hard work.

[aba4w]

So to many of the points you guys make I'd give a similar or the same answer, so I'm gonna cite only one (I'm a slow writer).
Thanks for all the links and recommendations! I also agree with a lot of points made here.

It's hard to get a consensus in philosophy because a lot of people participating in it don't approach it with proper rigor. Just look at philosophy professors and how often they make dumb as hell arguments.

I think it also depends on the assumptions you make or how you define morality or (if you believe in it) objective morality. I don't think there's an objective way to resolve these questions.

Though sure, maybe if you start from a certain framework and are willing to bite all the bullets, you are able to reason far and let empirics guide you.

But the person who makes that argument still acknowledges the animal has some sensibilities (or preferences). These animals we slaughter are fairly intelligent; Pigs are roughly as intelligent as three year old humans, for example. The person would need to justify that keeping an animal suffering for months on end just for fifteen minutes of pleasure (when alternatives that cause MUCH less harm are readily available) is a net positive. And in any case, they are acting immoral when they consider their preferences over the preferences for the animals. Even if they were causing suffering to animals with the sentience of flies, it would still be immoral, just less so, unless that suffering leads to some greater good in the world for others.

As a consumer you mostly decide about the future supply though, so if an animal exists or doesn't exist at all rather than the painful experiences a pig makes or doesn't make.
I agree that non-existence is morally neutral. However if you get to a point where it becomes blurry if the life of the pig is a net positive (somewhere between the average factory farm and an idealized "happy farm") it becomes harder to convince people to stop buying meat, since they then make the point that it's better for the pig to exist than not to exist, even if it's mistreated.
But sure you can work with something like a precautionary principle (which I also agree with) here if that convinces some people.

Depends on how you're viewing your own altruistic deeds, and it doesn't need to be viewed as complete servitude. Altruism doesn't "demand" anything, it's more of an ideal of living an ethical life. But even taking altruism to the extreme, I don't think it necessarily results in that. Think of it like Veganism; In this modern world, it's basically impossible to live without ANY animal products, but you can get closer by not consuming meat, dairy, eggs, or wearing wool/leather etc. You still might step on some insects or eat a product that has a tiny bit of dairy, but it's the 99% that really counts.

Of course, there are some people out there who are basically saints and dedicate all their time and effort towards reducing suffering and making the world a better place, but you don't need to be this epitome of selflessness to be a good person. You do need to maintain some sort of standard in taking care of yourself, otherwise you wouldn't be able to help others. It's more, when presented with an opportunity to help others over yourself, you choose to make that decision. You vote altruistically for social programs at the cost of an increase in taxes, you donate to charities over buying some new clothes or a frivolous widget, you give up your favorite foods to cause less suffering to animals, and so on. The net consequences of your actions (provided they are well-intentioned) determine your morality. Being ahead of the curve is often all that's needed, since most people don't do much beyond the bare minimum of altruism.

You are free to live your life however you want. No one in this world is perfect, but there is no reason to not strive for it. If your net actions are altruistic, by any reasonable definition are an altruist.

Even if you go through university and licensing to get a six figure job that is helpful to society (like green engineering), donate the vast majority of your income to charity and leave only enough to sustain yourself (and your family), vote progressively and talk with your political representatives (and encouraging others to do the same), eating Vegan and avoiding environmentally harmful foods like palm oil and rice, use public transport or an EV, minimize energy use (AC, heat, warm water), and engage in animal rights advocacy, there will still be some small areas where you could be improving on. It's an exercise in futility to be 100% altruistic 100% of the time.

That's mostly how I see things in practice. Every little bit good that one can do helps even if one is far from perfect.
Though I have a suspicion that having net actions that are largely altruistic is pretty hard and it's even harder to have an overall positive impact on the world if you're aren't a person of influence, given the suffering one causes by existing alone.

Do you have examples of people who are basically saints?

There are positions that the majority of moral philosophers take, a few surveys highlight those. Animal agriculture being problematic is broadly held. However, many philosophers are still erroneously Kantian with the beliefs (faith even) that the logical problems with the system will be solved. Many others are also poorly informed on science. There's limited interdisciplinary study between the sciences and philosophy, with each being famously bad at the other. Scientists often do not take philosophy seriously, and philosophers are often hundreds of years behind on sciences.

My understanding is that Kantianism (at least strict Kantianism) is more of a fringe position even among deontologists, but I'm not sure about that.
It's not just deontology though, according to the philpapers survey from 2020, most philosophers lean towards virtue ethics, with 25% percent being exclusively in favor of it, more than any other exclusive group, so there is a divide here too.

There is what is a better state in the universe, then in terms of actions what is strictly moral to do as an individual actor with respect to others, and then there is the best moral system which is the one that extracts maximum concessions of moral action without burnout and which can still be adopted as broadly as possible. These are literal calculus. They aren't easy problems and I can't give you easy answers, but I can help point you in the right direction and maybe you'll help with some of those answers in the collective project of human moral progress.

So it's mostly about what you can practically demand from a single person.
I think I have problems with this view as a matter of principle though. Why should only the wellbeing of other beings be considered morally? If you take it to the extreme, it could be moral to burn yourself alive in order to prevent another person from breaking their arm.
Also the possibility of other people taking advantage of you, which can feel unjust.

There is an appeal in attempt to base moral oughts on is statements via contradictions as Kant did, but it doesn't actually work and in nearly 300 years there hasn't been any real progress on it.
We start with axioms, but those axioms are presuppositional based on our use of language and participation in moral discourse.

What axioms and how are they presuppositional in that way? Is there maybe a good resource where I can read more about that?
I'd also be interested in resources that make the case that deontology doesn't work logically.

Do you prefer a paper cut which hurts a little and heals, or a painless amputation of your middle finger under anesthetic?
Problem solved.
You can figure it out most of the time by asking as long as the subject is reasonably informed. For non-human animals the asking involves observation and some conjecture, ethology is an entire field, but it's not rocket science to figure out that animals prefer certain conditions to others and make very broad claims about those, and employ the precautionary principle as a rule when in doubt (there are strong arguments to be made for this from a moral standpoint where it regards bias prevention). We err on the side of non-intervention with animals, like not farming them, until we can prove it causes less harm than the good it does for them (which is unsurprisingly astronomically unlikely).

I don't think it's always straightforward, for example when it comes to the question if an animal would like to experience a life with a certain amount of suffering and joy, or would rather prefer to not exist at all. It might not even be able to conceptualize that and thus can't make a decision about it

How do you determine that it's astronomically unlikely that more harm than good is caused? When it comes to the average factory farm then overwhelmingly that might be the case, sure, but with better regulations for animal welfare in factory farming I think it becomes harder to conclusively make that point, assuming that animals also experience some joy (from even simple things like eating food). For example if you're in certain countries in Europe with better regulations and pick only the highest quality tiers and seals of meat. While I don't think the regulations are enough and there is bound to be plenty of abuse and lack of control, I don't think there is a clearcut way to convince someone that it's astronomically unlikely that there isn't a net positive.

The principles you describe around precaution and bias prevention sound very sensible in any case.

People want to believe it's positive because they want to eat meat and want to feel good about it -- where the biases align there is clear, as is the precautionary principle as it applies to those animals. Humans should leave animals alone in the wild unless there's overwhelming evidence to the good of the contrary.
As it stands the argument to their misery based on behavior is extremely strong. If there were a tiny margin of good (which there's no reason to believe) from the animals' experiences, the economic and environmental arguments against it are very strong -- it would be the most resource inefficient way to bring that sliver of net good experience into the world, and the harmful knock-on effects to human flourishing and to wild animals would more than outweigh that for a net harm.

Depends on the severity of the maladaptive behaviour I'd say, things like cannibalism for sure. When it's just about things like chewing (on nothing, on bars ..) you could argue that maybe it isn't that bad, perhaps only the level of badness of a person being stressed or nervous about work and chewing on their fingernails or things like that. But sure, I don't know much of anything about ethology and to what degree there is a consensus and certainty about these issues.

Wild animal flourishing, not sure again, some ea people even argue for consuming more pasture meat and things like that in order to reduce wild animal suffering (through destructions of natural habitats). Though at least that's not an argument that normies would hit you with.

Human flourishing .. here you easily get into arguments about the health advantages and disadvantages of different diets, which doesn't seem clearcut territory.

Economically you can get into arguments about the efficiency of farms with and without animals, also in developing countries. Factory Farming in developed countries where you plant crops specifically for feeding or even import them is of course another matter.

You can maybe make precaution arguments in some cases again. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't be able to argue a lot of these points with authorative certainty.

For lack of definitive evidence (and the evidence on the side of harm to animals from said farming) extrapolating from the closest known experience is reasonable to get as close as we can. These aren't just arbitrary conjectures, it's based on reason and it's all we have.

I'd agree with that

No, of literally anything else those resources and that land could be used for.

You could plant crops to feed children in Africa or something like that in theory, but given the constraints of capitalism, not sure what the land would actually be used for instead that provides a big benefit.

If you get zero points for being vegan and you're still a bad person, and the other person gets to eat meat and claim all of the credit, there are a number of fundamental problems with that kind of calculus. So too are there problems with some kind of double counting calculus. It doesn't work. The claim you get for getting people to go vegan is modest, and frankly you do it because you want the world to be a better place because you're a genuinely good person and not looking to maximize moral points so that you can do more harm personally (if you ARE a genuinely good person, then you go vegan too).
It's more of a question of whether people want to play a math game to "win" at something, or if they're genuinely good people.

I'm confused by your reasoning here. Isn't it all about the consequences in the end, rather than being a genuinely good person? Someone who manages to make 10 people go vegan would have a huge effect, no matter if they go themselves vegan or not.
Issues like double counting just seem like abstract problems of how to define a good calculus, but that doesn't affect the actual state of the world.

Any arbitrary so called subjective "morality" is a system of values, which is oughts or preferences about the world around a sentient being (the only beings that can hold preferences), objective morality can really only be the weighted sum of all such systems -- which is, consideration for the interests of anything that can have them.
That gets you to preference consequentialism, and you can get there reasoning from axioms based on the root concepts involved -- things that really have to be presupposed in any relevant discussion.

How do you avoid typical conundrums, for example blood games where the audience draws a lot of enjoyment out of the games while the few participants suffer? I don't think the altruism rebuttal neccessarily works here. You could say the audience members are altruistic, because they might have the interest of the other members of the audience in mind.
Or someone outside who doesn't even enjoy the blood games makes sure they continue, because he has the stronger accumulated preference of the audience in mind.

Another more hypothetical case: Say there's a species that has a very strong preference to make other beings suffer and say they suffer themselves to large extent if they're not able to do so. Should other beings just bend over to that, because the preferences of said species makes up a large amount of all preferences and thus has a lot of weight?

[brimstoneSalad]

Though I have a suspicion that having net actions that are largely altruistic is pretty hard and it's even harder to have an overall positive impact on the world if you're aren't a person of influence, given the suffering one causes by existing alone.

Beyond animal agriculture, the suffering humans cause is much more limited. Even environmental destruction for development is short lived until humans take over that environment -- it's not an ongoing thing.
Humans also produce a large amount of good, collectively, simply by participation in society. Discounting ones own pleasure still makes you 1/8,200,000,000 responsible for the net happiness of 8,199,999,999 people, which is virtually being responsible for one average person's happiness (a not insubstantial amount).

Even with animal agriculture, I'm not fully convinced that a human life is a net bad in impact. But without it, the good is pretty hard to deny.
It's not hard to make a pretty good argument for being net positive as a vegetarian or reducetarian, much easier still as a vegan. None of that is hard to do.

My understanding is that Kantianism (at least strict Kantianism) is more of a fringe position even among deontologists, but I'm not sure about that.

Strict originalism sure, they all have their slight reformulations on the original recipe in attempt to fix problems -- it yet remains unsolved.

It's not just deontology though, according to the philpapers survey from 2020, most philosophers lean towards virtue ethics, with 25% percent being exclusively in favor of it, more than any other exclusive group, so there is a divide here too.

Answering "virtue ethics" with no qualifiers is probably the equivalent to the "just do the math and don't think about the implications" among physicists with regard to quantum physics interpretations. When looking at the substantiation for those virtues, anybody who thinks about them will arrive at consequentialist or deontological reasoning. In any sophisticated practice, virtue ethics is subsumed by consequentialism and deontology, which is why most philosophers prefer reasoning about morality (most do not prefer virtue ethics, even though they're divided between deontology and consequentialism).

It's noteworthy that the virtue ethicists indicate a higher rejection of logic than others who want to reason more carefully and have a rational basis for their beliefs.

To see the significance of those responses, we'd have to ask follow up questions and deconstruct those positions more than the surveys do. That data is limited, and in itself would be a huge undertaking to try to figure it out from the responses given.

Because that data is lacking, I would disregard those positions as either philosophers who are not interested in the justifications for ethics and just arbitrarily choose virtue because of that disinterest and a desire to stay out of the main spat, who did not see a good answer that reflects the nuance and so chose something they thought would read as close despite the underpinnings of the virtues being believed to be consequential or deontological, or who are intuitionists who amount to an uncredible response (intuitionism is not uncommon, but it represents the non-rigorous pole of philosophy schools).

I think I have problems with this view as a matter of principle though. Why should only the wellbeing of other beings be considered morally? If you take it to the extreme, it could be moral to burn yourself alive in order to prevent another person from breaking their arm.

You have a lot more to offer the world than self immolation to prevent a broken arm. Do not forget opportunity cost.
Taken to extreme, morality by necessity indicates some kind of sainthood. That's pretty much the definition of a moral saint. And yes, in a vacuum where there was nothing else to do for others than sacrifice oneself to prevent a minute harm, that would be the action of a saint.

You don't have to be a saint to be a good person. Morality is the natural polar opposite to selfishness. We should expect outcomes like that even if we don't envy them. People will naturally strike balances between being moral and being selfish in their lives, and it would be counterproductive to discourage that.

Also the possibility of other people taking advantage of you, which can feel unjust.

Justice is principally a deontological construct, but it can also be a rule consequentialist heuristic. I think the problem you're indicating is that you don't want such heuristics to break down in extreme circumstances, which isn't a realistic expectation. To avoid unusual outcomes in extreme situations you need some kind of rigid absolutism, which has its own absurd extremities but more importantly has no foundation in reason.

What axioms and how are they presuppositional in that way? Is there maybe a good resource where I can read more about that?
I'd also be interested in resources that make the case that deontology doesn't work logically.

We have some very old threads here on deontology, but there may be some better newer papers. I'm not sure how much is on the wiki. It's something I'd like to work on but have not had time.

Presuppositionaism is mostly popular as a neo-apologetics movement among fundamentalist Christians, it's faulty there, but it actually has valid application to secular moral arguments. If you're speaking English, there are certain definitions that things have because of the purpose of communication. As well as context, logically derived principles like Grice's maxims (look it up). Some meanings have been and must be presupposed as well as the function of the whole endeavor. If you're in the context of a philosophical debate on objective morality, there are certain productive and unproductive things for morality to mean. It is only productive to argue objective morality doesn't exist if it literally can't exist because you have proven logically that there is no possible objective formulation -- otherwise, morality should be understood as a toolset for analysis and rational discourse around it can occur. It doesn't need to be a physical thing floating around out there that can be denied without evidence. The burden of proof is reversed for conceptual frameworks, which should be assumed to be possible unless demonstrated otherwise -- or else, we might as well deny all math and potentially logic without external proof and what is the point of trying to discuss anything? (spoiler: none)

How do you determine that it's astronomically unlikely that more harm than good is caused?

It's astronomically unlikely that it causes less harm than the good. It's almost certain that it causes more harm than good. Animal behavior in intensive farming operations are indication of this on a strictly hedonic level alone, which is not even accounting for interest violations that the animal doesn't know about or the harms involved in slaughter.

You need very high welfare farms to muddy the issue at all, and in any case we retain the precautionary principle which says we shouldn't do it, and that's even before we account for the resource waste and environmental harm and harms to human health and flourishing.

Wild animal flourishing, not sure again, some ea people even argue for consuming more pasture meat and things like that in order to reduce wild animal suffering (through destructions of natural habitats). Though at least that's not an argument that normies would hit you with.

I think it's clear where those biases lie for people who are intent on eating meat. They will come up with something. That's why consequentialism so often fails, because people can fudge whatever they want to get a desired outcome without some guardrails like the physical sciences have. It ends up with the same problems of intuitionism in practice where people hold whatever moral systems their whims dictate, which is in practice no morality at all (it loses its utility). That's what rule consequentialism is there to help with. Heuristics like veganism, etc.

Human flourishing .. here you easily get into arguments about the health advantages and disadvantages of different diets, which doesn't seem clearcut territory.

It's pretty clear cut in terms of health beyond any marginal animal product consumption. If people are only erroneously set on taking a couple bites of fish a day for health (which is the only thing that's close to unclear), I think we have other things to worry about.

Economically you can get into arguments about the efficiency of farms with and without animals, also in developing countries. Factory Farming in developed countries where you plant crops specifically for feeding or even import them is of course another matter.

If we're only worried about nomadic people in undeveloped regions, that's a good problem to have.

You can maybe make precaution arguments in some cases again. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't be able to argue a lot of these points with authorative certainty.

With anybody who has internet access I don't think it's hard. We don't need to send missionaries to far off lands beyond the reach of technology to tell them to stop grazing goats on the tundra.

You could plant crops to feed children in Africa or something like that in theory, but given the constraints of capitalism, not sure what the land would actually be used for instead that provides a big benefit.

It would provide more benefit to simply leave it fallow and let forest regrow over time. Only a small fraction of the land is needed to feed human beings, and the crops needed for that are already grown (different varieties sometimes, but that's just a different seed and slightly different schedule).

I'm confused by your reasoning here. Isn't it all about the consequences in the end, rather than being a genuinely good person?

Most people are worried about not being bad people; this is where the force of moral argument usually comes in. But my point is that somebody who is actually a good person probably is more worried about others than about scoring those points.

Someone who manages to make 10 people go vegan would have a huge effect, no matter if they go themselves vegan or not.
Issues like double counting just seem like abstract problems of how to define a good calculus, but that doesn't affect the actual state of the world.

The person you describe is somebody playing that numbers game to try to be a net good person on paper rather than being an actual good person (who would also go vegan his or herself). And if this person is playing a numbers game, he or she has to look at the logic behind those rules which doesn't work when that game is leveraging the genuine virtue of others to get ahead.

I'm not a player hater in this context, but if they want to play the game and pretend to win they had better know the rules.

Hypothetically this person could pay a carnivorous animal hating psychopath to eat vegan, and continue eating meat without virtue theft. I can tell you said animal hating psycho would cost a lot more than vegan outreach, and it's not clear how much it would cost or how that would be achieved (you'd also have to test because this person would lie).

How do you avoid typical conundrums, for example blood games where the audience draws a lot of enjoyment out of the games while the few participants suffer?

Almost all sports are blood games to some degree. You might as well ask if American Football can be justified.

I don't think the altruism rebuttal neccessarily works here. You could say the audience members are altruistic, because they might have the interest of the other members of the audience in mind.
Or someone outside who doesn't even enjoy the blood games makes sure they continue, because he has the stronger accumulated preference of the audience in mind.

Where we're talking about social psychology, you have to look at the long game. The EA actor would probably work for gradual reforms to make the games less harmful and work toward getting people interested in alternatives like robot fighting instead.

Another more hypothetical case: Say there's a species that has a very strong preference to make other beings suffer and say they suffer themselves to large extent if they're not able to do so. Should other beings just bend over to that, because the preferences of said species makes up a large amount of all preferences and thus has a lot of weight?

No, the long game says that evil species should be eradicated and replaced by one that gets along better with others.