Congrats for coming up with a brain teaser for the hard consequentialists, interest consequentialism starts from the moral vegetarian position that ending sentient life unnecessarily is immoral and then 'tentatively' rejects by products from animal exploitation, because you can't say all animal use is immoral only that the consumer system of delivery doesn't allow us to easily distinguish the exceptions to the rule.danst0 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2017 3:47 pmThis is exactly the question I had.brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:45 pm If you'd rather be a human than a cow, or one of these aliens than a human, that should answer the question.
The Earth should support the beings with the more meaningful and fulfilling lives that you'd rather live than the other.
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Imagine you were to be born randomly as some species on Earth; wouldn't you rather your odds of being born human rather than a cow as high as possible?
Did I understand your point correctly?
In an optimal future there would be not a single, non-essential non-human left on earth since human conscience is superior to the one of animals. All resources would be used by humans.
What would be essential animals in this context?It still sounds wrong to me. Of course I would like to continue living my life even if there was a superior alien. Isn't there some additional value in the persistence of mankind overall and on the individual continuance of life from parent to child?
- Wildlife like bees (until we can fertilize our plants ourselves)?
- Pets either being used as educational tool for children (taking responsibility) or as a companion for comfort?
In this world as long as science provides means to survive with less diverse plants and animals, we can safely out compete and take up almost every square inch of land mass for humans, a tiny population of every species can be kept around in specific biosphere safaris for science, with vast genetic animal and plant seed banks to boost the population if necessary.
Evolutionary ethics cant take this route; if we value life for its sentience, diversity and the complex web of interdependent species that allows natural selection to work we have to provide maximum space for wild animals and plants to inhabit biospheres. That means restricting our impact on the environment by industrialising already inhospitable land and utilizing green architecture that doesn't present hazards for wildlife.
The old world of building cities on the most fertile ground e.g. river bends, and using inefficient animal agriculture technology as means to subsist should be retired. Plant based diets restrict the land mass needed to consume. All exceptions to the rule of exploitation in veganism i.e. eating eggs by rescued battery chickens can be seen then not as a problem as it is for those who hold an irrational adherence to a dogmatic deontology, but paying our dept for having artificially selected these animals for exploitation, and letting them live out their life, whilst looking for ways to re-wild a new gene pool where possible.
“Behavioural sciences fail to measure the intelligence of animals, because they look to how well something can form to a task and don't look at uniqueness, where as we should consider variation as the essential aspect of living beings and thereby strive to measure variance as a technique of describing the nature of life itself.” - Don’t think it’s an exact quote, just a note I made after reading Feral Children and Clever Animals; Reflections on Human Nature
So in response to your thought experiment we just have to hope aliens who arrive respect what we've done with the place, and haven't come light years across the galaxy only to enslave us and colonize the planet. That and if they've found a way to survive in space over long journeys you'd think they'd have the know how to be self sufficient and grow crops on their shuttle. Finally we'd have to subscribe to the idea that its likely interstellar war is a good use of higher intelligent beings prerogative, if that were the case preparing to defend earth like in the film Independence Day would be the ethical thing to do to not have earths resources exploited by an alien species. Personally I prefer the view that we have to better organize our civilisation in order to be worthy of contact aha, but its all fun speculation.I tried to see it the other way around in the following thought experiment: If I would live in a world where somehow superior beings would harvest mankind at the age of (e.g) 30. Would I still be able to see my life lived until then as a valuable experience and worth living?
In most scenarios, where mankind is not mistreated too much and death is quick, I would still come to a positive conclusion...
So suppose these superior beings had the alternative to use earth to grow plants, which they maybe liked less than humans, then I would be in the dilemma to argue _for_ keeping mankind as livestock?
Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing for killing animals for food, I am just still pondering on a rationale for how many non-human animals should still be on earth if all mankind switched to a plant-based diet.
