Re: "Getting to experience life" is not a benefit to animals

On Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 1:57:50 AM UTC+1, Dutch wrote:
> On 2020-11-04 8:09 a.m., Rupert wrote: 
> > On Sunday, October 18, 2020 at 11:54:47 PM UTC+2, Rat & Swan wrote: 
> >> Discuss. 
> > 
> > You're wanting to talk about whether existence is a benefit? Well, I quoted you Derek Parfit's discussion in I think it's Appendix G to "Reasons and Persons", and I also cited for you something that was written by Nils Hartog which was available for free on-line at the time (not sure if it still is). And you weren't all that thrilled. I take it you don't want to go to published literature then, you just want to talk about it. So okay. 
> > 
> > So remind me again what your argument is, you can't speak of there being an entity prior to the event of coming into existence so therefore you can't speak of a benefit? Okay, fair enough, that's an argument. Are you familiar with modal logic at all? The way to put pressure on your argument would be to consider whether you'd given the correct analysis of the word "benefit". Which was precisely the point of the Hartog paper I showed you, but you didn't care. 
> > 
> > Do you know possible world semantics for modal logic? In general, I can teach you Kripke semantics for propositional modal logic if you're at all interested, you might find it fun. Or even just classical propositional logic. But anyway. 
> >
> How's it going Rupert? I'd be interested to hear a brief summary of that 
> Hartog argument. Can a *company*, an entity with interests, for example 
> be said to benefit by coming into existence? It seems like a misuse of 
> the word to me, designed to mount a semantic justification for the 
> breeding of livestock as Salt says. Note that Ball, the prime opponent 
> of the usage, is a staunch defender of raising livestock.

Hey Dutch, how are you. Ummm okay look, I need to see if I can get hold of the full Hartog article again, it's not available for free for me on JSTOR right now, I'm afraid, but maybe if the library wasn't closed because of COVID. But anyway. I'll let you know when I've found myself a copy.

Can a company benefit from coming into existence. Okay, let me think, like every now and then Mari and I do talk about wanting to create our own company. Like companies benefit when they attract capital investment, don't they? We'd have to raise a bit of capital investment to get started, I think. I mean, yeah, I know, I know, it would be a weird way of talking, like our company has benefitted because it has just started to exist. 

Also let us clarify that I don't think Hartog wants to do any application of Logic of the Larder, and I previously found a totally different article which debunked Logic of the Larder in at least six different ways, regardless of whether you think coming into existence is a benefit or not. I can find that one, I think, if that's the kind of fun you want to have. But I mean, David Harrison isn't even here anymore, is he?

And yes, raising livestock, raising livestock. So our esteemed correspondent Jonathan Ball sees nothing fundamentally wrong with the institution of using animals as property. So okay yeah sure, like I guess I do still indeed believe that ultimately we should hold out the hope that we will one day have a world where animals are no longer used as property, I could *maybe* even see that coming to pass within 100 years, but you'll tell me I'm being optimistic there I know, but isn't the more important disagreement here, the two of you think that the nature of the harms imposed on livestock in order to produce the food are such that you're still justified in buying the food for the sake of whatever benefit you get out of it. 

You're a special case, because (assuming I actually believe the story that you tell about your life) you say that you try to be selective about the meat you eat, and you've run into nutrition problems on a vegetarian diet previously. So okay, when someone says they've got actual past experience of finding the diet not nutritionally adequate then I'm pretty sure I've always said it becomes very different when that's part of the equation. By the way, Nathan Nobis is my FB friend and he wrote an article on just that topic, does it make it okay if you just can't thrive on a vegan diet, and he thanked me in the acknowledgements section for helpful comments. So with your specific nutritional issues whatever they are, I have to say I'm not a doctor or a dietitian, and if you were interested in my own personal moral view about the optimal diet for you in this world we live in, for whatever reason, I'd need to get in touch with your doctor or dietitian and say to them "So just what are Dutch's issues with not being able to be vegan?" 

Jonathan Ball tries to tell some kind of story about how he just can't be vegan because he hasn't got enough time to do the research to find out how to make sure the diet is properly balanced, but I mean it's nonsense. You should both try my wife's vegan lasagna, neither of you would ever look back. That would fix it.

But of course, so yeah we get it, the deal with the two of you is that you say "Here you are passing judgment from your holy throne about whether or not people are morally justified in not being vegan, when you know perfectly well that the production of the food prodcuts you buy still causes some measure of harm". And then we go through all the usual angles. Can you quantify the amount of harm caused, do I have reasonable alternatives, am I even justified in keeping myself alive, should I maybe eat bivalves or insects or forage for food in dumpster bins or drink Soylint or buy up a property and grow my own food, can I reasonably say that I'm doing some kind of synthesis of rule consequentialism and deontology as in Parfit's book "On What Matters, Volume One" or works of Magnus Vinding so that I can say that yes there are deontological rules that I should respect but if I need to adopt a certain kind of lifestyle in order to have a significant positive impact on the world (be a good effective altruist, try to reduce suffering of humans and animals in the near term and ensure a good future for our species, use my brain-power to do the important research on topics related to that project, yada yada yada), then am I justified in allowing certain forms of consumption which still cause harm? 

And also note, the two of you are simply not in a position where you're totally abstaining from all forms of consumption which you can reasonably know are causing harm and premature death to humans. That point's been gone through a number of times. I could go through the examples. You might so "Oh, but total harm for that is quantitatively smaller", well I mean I don't know, that's a research project, and in any case Jonathan Ball has never been one for "playing the stupid counting game". It's a bit hard for Ball to say he's got a leg to stand on, really.

I mean, I might go for one actual publication on the topic, you know. I wrote a short essay on the themes we've been exploring which appeared in an amateur philosophy journal, and my first philosophy of mathematics publication will be coming out soon. It's about justifications for large-cardinal axioms (axioms of set theory extending the usual set of axioms, ZFC, that's Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice, which assert the existence of extremely large infinite numbers which are so big that their existence cannot be proved from the usual axioms, because you see in set theory we can have infinite sets of different sizes). So anyway.

Also Ball keeps on saying "You've never bothered to do proper research about how much harm is caused by the plant-food production". Well, listen Ball, the effective altruist movement exists and people ARE doing research about all sorts of stuff, like go here for example

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/

there are lots of threads here about academics and other volunteer researchers doing research about how to make the world better, and Animal Charity Evaluators did research about how much harm you avert if you go vegan, I think I even showed you the spreadsheet, Brian Tomasik tried to figure out which plant-based foods are best avoided if you want to minimise deaths from plant-based agriculture, and do we know right now how many animals are killed by growing oranges, no we don't, sorry, we're working on other stuff right now, like for example what are the major threats to the existence of our species in the next century, stuff like that. You want to know how many animals are killed by growing oranges and growing apples? Well, I mean, I'll work on it if you pay me. 1500 euros per month before tax is enough and I'll devote 40 hours per week to that research project, donating 10% of it to the top effective altruist charities, and if you won't fund the research project then I'll carry on with trying to prove this set of conjectures I'm working on in theory of buildings and totally disconnected locally compact groups, might get me a job at Amsterdam or Giessen if I'm lucky, and I'll also put aside time for working on the problem of safety in artificial intelligence, I just recently created a couple of research projects about that. Effective altruists think it's a major risk for the future of our species which needs more people with maths-brain-power working on it.

Anyways. Anyways. We were considering whether coming into existence is a benefit and whether that vindicates Logic of the Larder.

So look, let's cut through all the crap: Logic of the Larder is rubbish. If David Harrison wants to show up and defend it, then hey, won't that be joyful. Like, there's an interesting exchange between R. M. Hare and Peter Singer, in "Singer and his Critics", where Hare wrote an article called "Why I am Only a Demi-Vegetarian". Haven't got that book right now, sorry. But I've got "Peter Singer Under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His Critics", and I've got Joan Dunayer's book and Tom Regan's book and lots of Gary Francione stuff, so we can always talk about that. Also I think maybe I've got Peter Singer's "The Ethics of What We Eat". But I really know of no serious philosopher in this day and age who puts any stock in Logic of the Larder. You could check out David Benatar, by the way, "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence", on why coming into existence is a harm, but that's a bit too depressing.

Is coming into existence a benefit. Well, yeah, I don't really know, but Peter Singer thinks it is and I don't think it's the open-and-shut case that Jonathan Ball is making it out to be.

Anyways. You rooting for Biden or for Trump? I'm rather pleased to see that Biden's up to 264. Interestingly enough it looks as though Animal Liberation NSW are having a Zoom meeting in about 90 minutes, I might show up and say hi, but I doubt I'll see any familiar faces except for maybe Lynda Stoner.

Be well.