Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hello!
I'm here to learn about the philosophical positions of other users and hash out my own positions.

To sum up a few of my opinions: I'm a vegan, a negative utilitarian, a moral anti-realist, an anti-natalist, an optimistic nihilist and an epistemological nihilist.

Welcome Sicnoo0, I take it your negative utilitarian views prompted you to be Vegan and anti-natalist?
What are your arguments in favor of anti-natalism? You can find a lot of discussions on here about the topic, feel free to respond to them to continue the discussion.

Yep. And to quickly support anti-natalism:
I argue from the standpoint of harm prevention and so far it's just one singular argument.

I think arguing for anti-natalism from a consent standpoint is not a very good position, so I disregard the consent aspect entirely.

If I had good Bayesian reasoning for believing that a sentient life born into our specific universe would have zero likelihood of ever suffering, then I would find it morally neutral to give rise to that sentient life.

If that likelihood is nonzero then for all I know that life might suffer.

I suppose everyone would agree that the life might suffer, regardless of their stance on anti-natalism.

I think what makes me an anti-natalist is that I consider it morally irresponsible to risk causing suffering that otherwise would not have occurred.

I definitely think I'd enjoy contributing to discussions about it and I'm open to having my stance changed.

We also agree that that consent is a very poor argument in favor of antinatalism (Still haven't been able to read your post yet, I'll take a look at it soon). We actually have an article on our Wiki discussing the whole topic of antinatalism (and even the consent argument):
wiki/index.php/Antinatalism

No doubt that suffering is a possibility, but wouldn't you also agree that people also have positive experiences? Do you ascribe no value to pleasure/positive experiences? Do you think most people would say that all the suffering in their lives outweighed all the positive experiences they may have had?

I think it's a really bad slippery slope to say that there's nonzero value in positive experiences.
If you allow positive experiences to factor into morality then it seems to me you'd have to concede that any amount of suffering can be counterbalanced by some equal and opposite amount of pleasure or positive experience.
In order to have a self-consistent framework for determining whether something is a net good or net bad, you would have to have some justified system of assigning quantitative weights to suffering and wellbeing.
I think the mathematical task of coming up with a framework for weighing good versus wrong is not something we have any scientific basis for as of yet.
Also, if you say that wellbeing/pleasure or positive experiences have inherent worth, then it seems to me that you have to concede that the simple act of creating wellbeing is supererogatory. I think this runs into issues if you consider a hypothetical “perfect world” where suffering can never occur and only happiness occurs. In that "perfect world" I believe it would be morally neutral to bring a new life into existence. To say that positive experiences are inherently valuable is to say that giving birth is morally supererogatory and the more sentient creatures you birth the more moral you become.

I think that's a problem, because having three kids shouldn't be inherently more moral than having two kids, no matter what universe we find ourselves in.

And this is all assuming we're talking about the wellbeing of a sentient creature being weighed against the suffering of that same sentient creature.
If we wanted to be more loose and talk about the wellbeing and suffering of all agents involved then we run into even worse problems; if there's moral value in positive experiences regardless of whose personal experiences they are, then you can justify any horrendous action based on how much pleasure you sadistically derived from it.

Welcome

We really need to do a full article on negative utilitarianism (preference or hedonic), it suffers from the same issues classical hedonic utilitarianism suffers from, but compounded, in attempt to fix a general issue of utilitarianism (of all types).

Can you make a note @Red?

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 9:46 pm I think it's a really bad slippery slope to say that there's nonzero value in positive experiences.
If you allow positive experiences to factor into morality then it seems to me you'd have to concede that any amount of suffering can be counterbalanced by some equal and opposite amount of pleasure or positive experience.

I hope you'll admit that not liking the outcome of moral reasoning doesn't invalidate that reasoning.
Arbitrarily disconsidering positive value is as credible as arbitrarily disconsidering negative value. You need a justification for doing so that's more than "I don't like the outcome".

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 9:46 pmIn order to have a self-consistent framework for determining whether something is a net good or net bad, you would have to have some justified system of assigning quantitative weights to suffering and wellbeing.
I think the mathematical task of coming up with a framework for weighing good versus wrong is not something we have any scientific basis for as of yet.

I don't know how you got this idea. I'm very curious, did you read this somewhere?
It's trivial to do such an assessment, and is well grounded both in philosophy of mind and empirical observation.

If I want a cookie, and I'm willing to sustain an electric shock of X intensity to get said cookie (with full prior knowledge of the experiences), then clearly the pleasure of the cookie outweighs the pain of the shock in my experience.
It's even easier to do this assessment with nominally negative vs. positive preferences.

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 9:46 pmAlso, if you say that wellbeing/pleasure or positive experiences have inherent worth, then it seems to me that you have to concede that the simple act of creating wellbeing is supererogatory.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. You introduce a lot of baggage and implications of a duty vs. virtue system with words like "supererogatory" that I don't think you've accounted for within the system. Utilitarianism does not classically make such a distinction to my knowledge.
Maybe just say it's good to do?

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 9:46 pmTo say that positive experiences are inherently valuable is to say that giving birth is morally supererogatory and the more sentient creatures you birth the more moral you become.

I think that's a problem, because having three kids shouldn't be inherently more moral than having two kids, no matter what universe we find ourselves in.

So, in some unrealistic hypothetical your feelings disagree with a reasoned conclusion, and therefore you completely upend the foundations of a well reasoned moral system to turn it into one that makes the opposite conclusion which you prefer, and you do so based on the justification that you didn't prefer one of the conclusions, then you use that arbitrarily selected system to reason that your preferred conclusion is correct?

Couldn't it be possible that your feelings are just incorrect, much as say the feelings of a homophobe that homosexuality is morally wrong, and that the original conclusion reached (that in this imaginary perfect world having more children is better than having fewer) is actually correct?
Doesn't that seem more reasonable than having to arbitrarily disregard half of moral value for only circular reasons?

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 9:46 pmIf we wanted to be more loose and talk about the wellbeing and suffering of all agents involved then we run into even worse problems; if there's moral value in positive experiences regardless of whose personal experiences they are, then you can justify any horrendous action based on how much pleasure you sadistically derived from it.

This is broadly a problem with all utilitarianism, including negative utilitarianism.

In negative utilitarianism, simply say the "deviant" is suffering infinitely from his unfulfilled urges, and relieves that unimaginably vast suffering by causing any amount of suffering he wants to his victims and it's justified for him, thus making him a good person for doing it.

You can't negate the utility monster by arbitrarily disregarding the value of positive experience.

Instead, look to altruism for a better take on personal level moral action.
Regardless, judging the moral goodness or badness of a person is more complicated than that.

Without an exact quantitative framework, how can we ever say that it's morally worse for me to set someone on fire than it is for me to slightly inconvenience a million people?

I didn't read it anywhere; it's just my current understanding of what'd be necessary to decide what's worse between two choices of action.

I don't want to bite the bullet on utility monsters and say that we should actually prioritize the feelings of deviants suffering from unfulfilled urges.
This is making me think I might actually want to drop utilitarianism altogether and adopt some form of deontology.

I'd like to apologize for repeatedly pointing out that this or that "seems wrong" based only on a feeling I have.

I acknowledge that perfectly valid evaluations of morality can lead to answers that go against our intuitions. What I should have said instead is that if an intuition contradicts the conclusion of some moral framework then both should be re-evaluated to see which one is wrong.

I concede that the only reason I reject the idea that it's a moral good to bring new wellbeing into existence is that it conflicts with my intuitions.

Also, I concede that I should have just used the phrase "morally good" instead of using the term 'supererogatory'.

Update: I've switched from being a negative utilitarian to being a rule utilitarian

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 09, 2023 6:22 pm Update: I've switched from being a negative utilitarian to being a rule utilitarian

Good choice. Can I interest you in an upgrade to rule-preference utilitarian, where the utility of a rule is based on preference utilitarianism rather than hedonic? It's immune to the pleasure pill problem.

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:46 pm Without an exact quantitative framework, how can we ever say that it's morally worse for me to set someone on fire than it is for me to slightly inconvenience a million people?

You don't need an exact one to make reasonable approximations, like assuming people are of equal value.
Asking somebody if he or she would rather be set on fire or slightly inconvenienced a million times is a good way to get there.

In actual practice, people are bad at very large numbers, so eventually the inconvenience would become larger once we examined the implications (like the rest of your life being nothing but an experience of perpetual inconvenience vs. being set on fire once and maybe surviving it to have a fruitful life).

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:46 pmI don't want to bite the bullet on utility monsters and say that we should actually prioritize the feelings of deviants suffering from unfulfilled urges.
This is making me think I might actually want to drop utilitarianism altogether and adopt some form of deontology.

Deontology has much larger intuition issues, like the murderer at the door. And then serious philosophical logical issues, like inconsistency in its derivation.
Altruism may be more helpful here, wherein it's easy to call those people satisfying their own desires at the expense of others wrong. That doesn't help as much with a third party doing it, but in the real world rule consequentialism solves it, because that's never realistically going to be actually a good thing considering all of the many implications.

You might also consider anti-evilism as an alternative, but that can have other issues.

Sicnoo0 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:46 pmI'd like to apologize for repeatedly pointing out that this or that "seems wrong" based only on a feeling I have.

I acknowledge that perfectly valid evaluations of morality can lead to answers that go against our intuitions. What I should have said instead is that if an intuition contradicts the conclusion of some moral framework then both should be re-evaluated to see which one is wrong.

I concede that the only reason I reject the idea that it's a moral good to bring new wellbeing into existence is that it conflicts with my intuitions.

Also, I concede that I should have just used the phrase "morally good" instead of using the term 'supererogatory'.

Thank you. This is a rare event on the internet. Less rare here, but still uncommon in general.