When proposing a utilitarian ethical theory, people can’t credibly choose any definition of utility they chose. And if asked to assess their utility according to some specified definition, we can expect that people will show some respect for the specified definition when making their assessment.

Only the subject can feel what the subject feels, but there is a good correlation between self-reported happiness and estimates of other people’s happiness by those who know the other well. Also, utility defined in terms of idealised preference satisfaction, or achievement of a specific list of valuable things which may include objectively observable things like how people function, is more amenable to assessment by others. Idealising preferences involves correcting for errors of logic, limited information, and so on, and another person can do this to an extent.

I certainly agree that utilitarianism is not irrevocably flawed by any subjectivity in it.
If utility is ultimately what matters (regardless of how subjective it is), and I think it is, why not have policy guided by utility considerations as best they can be assessed. What superior alternative is available? Note that utilitarianism says that if we can best serve utilitarian ends by directly aiming at something else, rather than directly at maximum utility promotion, we should do that.

Negative utilitarianism is unsound. There is a good argument that X more units of utility contributes the same moral value to the world, regardless of whether it accrues to an individual with negative or positive prior utility. As far as value to the individual affected is concerned, there is an excellent argument that this is true by the definition of utility. If the definition of utility doesn’t imply this, how are we to understand utility: what would it mean and measure? And why would a gain of X for an individual not contribute X to overall moral value? It’s the same gain wherever and whenever it occurs. It might be argued that a gain of X adds more moral value to the world when it accrues to a worse off being, but if that’s true we should favour “prioritarianism”

The pleasure of a bath might be different to the pleasure we experience when we hear good news about a friend, but different pleasures are commensurable because we can rate them on the one scale which reveals our preferences between them. Sometimes we might be uncertain about where exactly to place a certain pleasant or unpleasant experience on the scale, but this just implies that humans have trouble making some judgements, not that the two things under consideration are fundamentally incomparable. If pushed, we could choose, even if we might make a mistake due to human frailty. (Human limitations are quite different from conceptual incommensurability which would apply even if we imagine a creature with a perfect judging capacity, rather than a human, evaluating things.) Why aren’t all goods and bads, human and non-human, commensurable, with their commensurability understood in terms of such a model of rational choice between different goods and bads? Empirical evidence in terms of felt experiences by humans is not applicable here because one being can’t feel what another feels. We have to consider the theoretical (im)plausibility of claiming that some enjoyments and sufferings are commensurable while others aren’t, with a certain species boundary making the critical difference.

Further, even if we knew for certain that non-commensurability did apply, this would mean we should be thoroughly agnostic when it comes to clashes between human and animal interests. Non-commensurability certainly doesn’t justify effectively assuming that animal interests don’t count (or count less) while human interests count (fully). The claim that two things are incommensurable doesn’t imply that one of them has little or no, or merely less, importance, let alone specify which one that might be.

I think commensurability is near certain and see no basis for assuming non-commensurability. However, provided there is any possibility of commensurability, we shouldn’t be agnostic. Non-commensurability leads to agnosticism, and commensurability (in conjunction with sound ethical reasoning) to giving animal interests equal consideration (see Singer’s arguments on this). Our behaviours should then be guided by a balanced analysis including these two possibilities. And since non-commensurability can’t lead to any policy recommendations, while commensurability (in conjunction with sound ethics) does lead to non-speciesist policies that are compatible with utilitarian ethical principles, any balance should result in us pursuing non-speciesist acts that are compatible with utilitarian principles because this might be right and we have no decision-making guidance under non-commensurability. In the real world, we inevitably make decisions that impact on animals whether we consciously focus on them or not when making our decisions. Not making any animal-affecting decisions is not a practical possibility. We should use what information we might have about animal interests versus human interests (even if we are not certain that we have information).

I’m mystified that some people who regard themselves as environmentalists are keen to defend meat consumption given the evidence that vegetarianism could significantly reduce the environmental impact of food production. If supposed non-commensurability between animal and human sufferings is supposed to allow the interests of animals to be ignored, why object to even wanton cruelty to animals? There is cruelty in farming, especially factory farming, and if you only criticise cruelty that brings no benefit of any sort to any human can you object to any cruelty at all? Note that sadists derive pleasure from cruelty that is unrelated to food production, clothing production, etc.

Under “ethical theories”

Mind you I could see that battery farming tigers could be a tricky business.

“”Empirical complications, which apply to all theories, don’t falsify an ethical theory, only theoretical flaws do.”

“Empirical complications, which apply to all theories, don’t falsify an ethical theory, only theoretical flaws do.”

I strongly reject this contention. If someone invents an ethical framework intended to revolutionize the way humans behave the onus is entirely on them to work through what you call the “empirical complications”. A case in point is Marxism, which changed various societies without first working through the “empirical complications” of how socialism would work in practice. The result, needless to say has been untold misery.

“all suffering should be regarded as commensurate and falling on a continuum for evaluation purposes”

Following on from my first point, you need to demonstrate, with empirical evidence, what you want us to believe. You saying it doesn’t make it so.

For now, I’m perfectly content to keep on eating battery hen eggs and intensively farmed red meat, catch fish and poison and shoot the odd fox, feral cat and rabbit whenever I get the chance.

Personally my decision is about my sense of myself as a human being with the ability to choose not to engage in actions I think are morally dubious. I know it’s not particularly rational but neither are most of the other currents of thought and emotion which matter in my life.

In what sense is it “radical” for humans to consider themselves exceptional relative to other animals?

I don’t agree with Fyodor’s radical assertion of human exceptionalism.

Radical? Really? Have you been to a butcher recently?

This is all pretty interesting. I don’t agree with Fyodor’s radical assertion of human exceptionalism. I think there is some similarity between suffering of (many) animals and our own suffering. But I think that’s mainly limited to physical pain and grossly unnatural constraint preventing an animal meeting basic biological urges (though that’s got to be balanced against the fact that nature prevents a lot of that itself – we have a natural urge not to have fleas and ticks, but animals in the wild are a non-stop picnic for various parasites)

As for ‘happiness’ well that’s much harder. I don’t really have any ambitions for animal happiness other than that we not too cruelly interfere with their own drives – or inflict physical pain on them.

I think the example you raise of Singer and the cows is a good one. But it takes me in a quite different direction. Singer says that he’d kill 10 cows to a human. Given that he seems to think of killing the cows as a utilitarian bad this presumably means that there may be some point at which as you increase the number of cows the utilitarian calculus changes. Someone who was seriously utilitarian (it seems to me) can’t say anything about killing cows in the absence of knowing basic things like what kind of death they’d have otherwise and whether it would be better or worse. Most cows I presume die worse in nature (slowly and painfully of old age or disease) than they do even in an abattoirs. (Like Dorothy Parker said about humans, there have been billions of them and not one had a happy ending yet). And we are dwarfed by our ignorance in comparing the relevant counterfactuals – what would be on the paddock if there were no cows, what other animals might be there and how ‘sentient’ are they etc etc.

You say that any ethical standard has problems drawing lines. Perhaps that’s true, but in my ‘aesthetic’ system I don’t think I have problems of anything like this magnitude. I make sense of the extraordinary intractability of ‘maximising happiness’ in the animal kingdom by regarding it as essentially beyond my ken. I then try not to inflict unnecessary pain on animals. I have a (somewhat tentative) leaning towards vegetarianism for ‘aesthetic’ reasons (it’s also pretty healthy). That is I don’t think it’s all that flash to go munching through my fellow creatures. Why, because I like them! I don’t eat people, and that’s quite clearly not for utilitarian reasons. Once they’re dead why don’t we make soap out of them? I am also against organised cruelty to animals for similar ‘aesthetic’ reasons, and I don’t mind calling upon the help of utilitarianism and any other ethical system to oppose such horrible practices. But at that point most ethical systems will say you’re doing the wrong thing.

If I were a utilitarian I would (surely) consider whether when I or anyone else did eat meat it would be good to eat smaller or larger animals (more or less meat per life or pain spent). I’ve never seen anyone seriously consider this (though no doubt such discussions exist in philosophy journals). I take this as illustrating how little utilitarianism has to offer on this subject, and indeed how even if Singer thinks his analysis is utilitarian, at bottom it’s not.

(As an afterthought – why am I picking on Singer? I’m not being entirely fair, or efficient or utilitarian in picking on him. It’s just that I’ve read him and not others.) I think he has interesting things to say and I’m not that down on him – I’m more interested in the arguments I’m making in reaction to his arguments.

Brent Howard said:

There are particular conceptions of utility (like hedonism or good feeling, idealised preference satisfaction, or a specific list of valuable things) that have been suggested, and that can be debated. From this perspective, utility isn’t a nebulous catch-all concept. I think the case for hedonism is strong. People can’t, with credibility, simply choose any conception of utility that instinctively appeals to them; substantive arguments can be made in relation to particular conceptions.

“Utility”

The issues you appear interested, like trade-offs between different species, are equally issues for all philosophies. They don’t become more important just because the philosophy under discussion is utilitarianism. Different philosophies just give different answers to constant questions that remain of the same ethical importance. Why not object to all the non-utilitarian philosophers who have ignored them

Particular arguments made by Singer have not been engaged with (unfortunately, there’s a general tendency in that direction in this debate overall).

Well the comment may have been addressed to others rather than me – I don’t know. But I began the discussion by complaining that a whole host of issues are not engaged with by Singer. Now most of us agree that wanton cruelty to animals is a bad thing. Done on an organised mass scale it’s that much worse. You’ve gone charging after anti-animal libbers as is your right. But Steve M is now raising very similar points to mine – though in service of greater hostility to Singer’s political message (which I don’t really have a problem with). It’s Singer who doesn’t engage with these boundary questions. Yet they seem to me to be the first bunch of things that arise from a really utilitarian framework.

You’ve not really engaged with us on that score – except to decry the most egregious assaults on the welfare of animals within our care. Well I decry them too – but utilitarianism doesn’t help me do it (any more than any other framework) because it’s such a clear case.

So please engage with us if you want to disagree with us.

“Few are claiming that non-human animal interests should receive no consideration, but once it is acknowledged that animal suffering matters, on what reasoned basis do we stop short of equal consideration for animal interests?”

One problem with this argument is that we have no way of knowing how a particular species of animal other than ourselves experiences suffering. For example, a few thousand threadworms may “suffer” if I administer my pet an anti-worming tablet but no-one can be sure how it experiences that suffering. Until I see hard evidence from a disinterested party that convinces me otherwise, I’m happy to assume the “suffering” is incommensurate with human suffering and ignore it.

And if we decide that human suffering is commensurate with animal suffering, what then?

How many Calcutta rats trump the rights of one human child?

These soughts of questions are unavoidable in the animal liberationist framework and I find the anti-human consequences unpalatable to say the least.

Gary Francione interview

“And then we’ve got PeTA bringing Playboy models to Capitol Hill, to attract the attention of legislators. PeTA trivializes activism just as Peter Singer trivializes the theory of animal rights. Combined, these people have managed to turn a serious idea into a peep show.”

Whilst I appreciate his efforts in some directions, Singer has not really lived the spartan life of pure thought which intellectualism requires during his stays at Scotch College and Princeton Univeristy. Some of his ideas about life make one think he should have studied harder and become a medical doctor rather than trying to impose some of his more dodgy views.
Singer is a pop intellectual, from a school that does not make it into the premier league of academic achievement in Australia, and is currently at a university that is based more around a cash business and walmart than scholarship in a toga with a diet of fruit and nuts.

If you wish to engage in the animal liberation debate at a more serious level try the sting ray that is the size of a van at Cape Patterson about 25 metres from the man made rock pool.

Under utilitarianism, the “overall good”

Especially if that whatever is slow-cooked liver of force-fed duck, followed by the least economical part of a grass-fed (and hence thoroughly unsustainable) yearling Angus.

Utilitarianism is not antithetical to aesthetics. In fact, “utility”, that great nebulous catchall of a concept SHOULD encapsulate aesthetics if it is to be logically consistent. However, aesthetics, like empathy, is a subjective concept, just like utility itself.

The disutility caused by the suffering of intensively farmed animals may be materially higher for Jane than John. All thing being equal, John is thus more likely to accept intensive farming. That is the end result of utilitarian thinking – most of us don’t think the suffering of animals creates more disutility than cheap meat provides in utility. That’s why we allow factory farming. Of course, the rejoinder is that it’s the animals’ utility that should matter, but the anti-speciesist argument is thoroughly underwhelming: the well-being of other animals is not as important as that of humans.

Note that this is different to the paternalism lurking behind the “efficiency” arguments that have been presented. That is, that it is “better” for us to eat less meat or that it consumes less economic resources to switch to a vegetarian diet. Both of these examples implicitly ignore the utility of individuals in favour of a reified “greater good”, which is always of dubious progeny.

Andrew’s line in melodrama was entertaining, but:

All it does is allow people to more easily acquiesce to the sort of unspeakable lifelong torment which we inflict on billions of sentient creatures just to satisfy the transient tantalising of our tastebuds.

Personally, I take the “transient tantalisation” of my tastebuds very bloody seriously, and am more than willing to “acquiesce” to inflicting torment on other animals to facilitate it. It’s doubtful I’m in the minority on this point.

It took 20 comments, but the real agenda eventually made it to the table.

In general terms, shifting away from factory farming would reduce environmental impacts, but shifting away from meat consumption all together would be far better again.

People can dismiss all this with their misconceptions about animal lib nutters if they like, but if we’re actually wanting to have an evidence based debate about issues like reducing greenhose emissions, then we should remove the mental blockage that makes so many people instinctively assume it is loopy fringe stuff whenever people advocate eating less meat. Of course, this should also mean that those who advocate eating less meat on ethical grounds should acknowledge it when the evidence about environmental or health impacts doesn’t suit their preferred position.

As for Singer, I think it’s wrong to suggest he “doesn’t go to lots of places that his framework ought to take him as a high priority (perhaps because it would seem bizarre to his audience and so alienate his ‘base’).”

He may have intellectual blindspots within his own framework that he doesn’t confront as fully as he could – like all of us I suspect – but I think he often goes to places that alienates lots of people, including his base – (mind you some of his ‘base’ are very easily alienatable (not sure if ‘alienatable’ is a real word, but you know what i mean)). He’s not a politician and he doesn’t ‘run’ animal liberation groups, he’s a professional thinker and questioner and to me he seems to aim specifically at trying to get people to questions the validity of the reasoning they use to justify their ethical or moral positions.

His stuff about the justification or otherwise of euthanasing severly disabled children was obviously highly controversial, and didn’t go down well with a lot of animal welfare advocates – not least because some people used it to try to discredit the animal libreation movement too. (Obviously, it didn’t go down well with plenty of other people too)

some of the stuff in his recent ‘Ethics of what we Eat’ book challenged the stereotypical ‘lefty’ preconceptions about organics, corporations and about larger scale food production and retailing. Some of his comments about medical experimentation on animals and humans have upset some of the anti-vivisectionists.

I suppose one of Singer’s problems is that he engages in dialogue through mainstream media and culture, as well as academia. The short-hand soundbite nature of mainstream communication, as well as the incentives to be controversial rather than complete, do leave more attack points open. However, I get the feeling that above all he wants people to think and question their beliefs, and if he can achieve that (which he obviously has better than most) he’s having an impact.