Re: Great comments on new #namethetrait video
Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 3:23 am
@Irrationalogic Thanks for the feedback.
The point of laying out an argument like NTT 2.0 or NTJ is not to foreclose all further possibility of discussion about whether the conclusion is true or justified. Some interlocutors might well find the premises immediately compelling and be convinced by the argument simply as stated. But much of the action is of course in arguing about whether the premises are true, and much of the point of laying out the arguments is to clarify the various ways in which one might get off-board with the reasoning leading to the conclusion, and to organize discussion on whether there are actually good reasons to get off board with the reasoning in those various ways.
You can see a bit of what we've been discussing on defending / arguing in favour of the premises in the philosophical vegan entry on NTT 2.0 (wiki/index.php/NameTheTrait_2.0), although this is still in its very early stages.
I don't know all of the details of Destiny or JF's views, although as I understand Destiny argued in favour of a version of Contractarianism much like that of the philosopher David Gauthier on much the same grounds (that it could show how being moral is something like in one's self interest or instrumentally rational whatever one's preferences). There is a big philosophical literature on why this sort of view fails in its own terms, see for instance Holly Smith's paper "Deriving Morality from Rationality" (https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIDMF.pdf). We intend to have an accessible and general summary of this in our planned entry on moral patiency (and perhaps a related entry / entries on social contract theories; morality and rationality / self-interest; and / or error theory about morality, reform, and animals).
I really don't know what JF's view is, although I think I heard that it had something to do with population ethics and the argument that animal agriculture is actually better for farmed animals because they wouldn't have existed without it. That can get into interesting ethical issues about population ethics (about which we have planned entries), but the main problem is that even if one took the view that it's just as morally important to create new beings as it is to not harm existing beings it is still a bad idea to consume animal products. This is because, since animal agriculture uses so many more environmental inputs (thus taking away habitat from wild animals - which in virtue of the much greater richness of wild vs. farmed habitat are much more plentiful per unit land or water than farmed animals, even weighted by likely level of sentience / capacity for well-being) and causes so much more environmental damage (thus so many killing wild animals, destroying their habitat, and ensuring that many fewer exist in the future - and again there are many more sentient wild animals per unit habitat than farmed ones, and in virtue of lack of confinement and other factors their quality of life is higher) that veganism results in many more animals leading much better lives.
The point of laying out an argument like NTT 2.0 or NTJ is not to foreclose all further possibility of discussion about whether the conclusion is true or justified. Some interlocutors might well find the premises immediately compelling and be convinced by the argument simply as stated. But much of the action is of course in arguing about whether the premises are true, and much of the point of laying out the arguments is to clarify the various ways in which one might get off-board with the reasoning leading to the conclusion, and to organize discussion on whether there are actually good reasons to get off board with the reasoning in those various ways.
You can see a bit of what we've been discussing on defending / arguing in favour of the premises in the philosophical vegan entry on NTT 2.0 (wiki/index.php/NameTheTrait_2.0), although this is still in its very early stages.
I don't know all of the details of Destiny or JF's views, although as I understand Destiny argued in favour of a version of Contractarianism much like that of the philosopher David Gauthier on much the same grounds (that it could show how being moral is something like in one's self interest or instrumentally rational whatever one's preferences). There is a big philosophical literature on why this sort of view fails in its own terms, see for instance Holly Smith's paper "Deriving Morality from Rationality" (https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIDMF.pdf). We intend to have an accessible and general summary of this in our planned entry on moral patiency (and perhaps a related entry / entries on social contract theories; morality and rationality / self-interest; and / or error theory about morality, reform, and animals).
I really don't know what JF's view is, although I think I heard that it had something to do with population ethics and the argument that animal agriculture is actually better for farmed animals because they wouldn't have existed without it. That can get into interesting ethical issues about population ethics (about which we have planned entries), but the main problem is that even if one took the view that it's just as morally important to create new beings as it is to not harm existing beings it is still a bad idea to consume animal products. This is because, since animal agriculture uses so many more environmental inputs (thus taking away habitat from wild animals - which in virtue of the much greater richness of wild vs. farmed habitat are much more plentiful per unit land or water than farmed animals, even weighted by likely level of sentience / capacity for well-being) and causes so much more environmental damage (thus so many killing wild animals, destroying their habitat, and ensuring that many fewer exist in the future - and again there are many more sentient wild animals per unit habitat than farmed ones, and in virtue of lack of confinement and other factors their quality of life is higher) that veganism results in many more animals leading much better lives.