Posts about Peter Singer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w23UMsbMFtM
I think this is rather interesting video and all serious and honest discussion about animal ethics is relevant to ex-vegans, non-vegans, anti-vegans and vegans alike.
Here we have ex-vegan (I think Alex has not gone fully vegan again, but not sure) and flexible vegan Singer, who is the guy who pretty much made veganism mainstream by defending it from utilitarian point of view discussing seriously about many things dogmatic vegans think are obvious and not even worth of questioning. Ironically Singer has never been strict vegan himself, he eats some dairy and eggs now and then due to practical reasons. And he is not expert in health matters (and since he is not strict he has not really experienced the health effects of strict vegan diet).
Singer (The grand old man of veganism) actually quite believably defends the idea that something like grass-fed beef can be a somewhat moral choice as surprising as that sounds he is willing to consider it could work. It's not his personal choice, but he actually says that:
"I can't say with any confidence that it's wrong to bring animals into existence, give them good lives and then kill them in a way that causes them no suffering."
Unlike many vegans he is not actually going to argue that it is "just clearly wrong". He says he cannot think any philosopher could do that actually, since it's so complicated and messy problem. There are not simple answers to complicated questions I guess.
He mentions another important philosopher Derek Parfit here who mentioned this problem that is it better from utilitarian point of view to have more decent lives or just a few very good ones (That is the main idea at least) and Alex mentions non-identity problem that is IMO central in philosophy of animal agriculture as well.
The fact that there is no option for a farm animal to be born as a wild animal or as a human, it has identity only after birth and farm animals can practically exist only as farm animals. Is it really morally better not to be born at all? It cannot "be better" since there are no existence, no being, no identity to compare the life with. But it cannot be worse either for the same reasons. We just cannot compare being with an identity to a being without one, since that doesn't exist. If we think life itself has positive value to begin with we actually benefit animal by bringing it into existence and that seems just weird from intuitive point of view of we would apply same logic to humans. That is the problem vegans usually bring up to debunk it, but it's not convincing (even to Singer) since it's not at all analogous.
Singer agrees and is actually ready to defend this hypothetical human-farming with the same conditions for the sake of an argument only, he thinks in practice that would never work though and should be kept inside hypothetical discussions. But he brings up the same conditions to humans and says that this argument to debunk humane farming with human example is not convincing to him.
So as crazy and brutal as it sounds, it wouldn't be unequivocally wrong to bring humans into existence to farm and kill them if they wouldn't exist otherwise at all and if their lives as whole would still be very good and end painless. Serious problems would no doubt arise in practice (and it makes no sense to do that), but as mere thought experiment it proves nothing about morals, it's purely emotion-based intuitional argument in the end.
Alex really has problem with this, but mainly because his intuition just screams at him. And surely most humans have same experience, but emotions are not rational arguments. I have the same "intuitional pain" as Alex or well cognitive dissonance about this. It feels so wrong but rationally I have to agree with Peter Singer. If there are two choices, good life with limitations or no life at all I think there are no rational reason to reject opportunity to live that good life. There is nothing inherently wrong even in that human-scenario while it sounds horrible, but we cannot imagine such a scenario ever taking place in the real world so discussing about it is not really relevant. It only applies to scenario where other lives are definitely out of the question as it is to most farm animals. Most of them can never become like pets for practical reasons not have good life as wild animals (or they would cause such destruction it would hurt other animals more than benefit them)
So Singer seems to be somewhat tolerant (compared to most vegans at least) of humane farming of animals (not human farming of course lol, in practice that would erode society and humans couldn't trust each other anymore) and he says he willingly accept flexitarianism under certain circumstances as well.
Unfortunately he doesn't mention anything about health-related exceptions that's disappointing. I think we who cannot be vegan without becoming sick definitely would need to be addressed as exceptions as well, even if we would otherwise see veganism as the goal.
Crop deaths are mentioned in passing as well, but unfortunately not addressed in greater detail. I think Singer makes a mistake to not educate himself much about plant-farming and it's realities. It seems to me he makes awfully lot of assumptions about moral conditions of plant-farming and still lacks actual nowledge about the subject like pesticides etc. It would be interesting to discuss this with experts of agriculture together with Singer. His views might actually change. His work has been so influential among vegans so he cannot really back down completely on his views now without losing his credibility. But he actually makes a good case for ethical omnivorism here, perhaps without realizing it, but still. From all people, Singer, real father of ideological veganism, makes a rather convincing argument in favor of humane farming, it is so ironic on many levels.
This was also somewhat weird to watch knowing that Alex himself may not be vegan anymore, he still defends vegan points vigorously even when the guy who pretty much is the vegan messiah is not so strict.
After all I do somewhat respect Peter Singer while I disagree with him about veganism. I kinda share his consequentialist ethics. I'm not interested in principles or virtues if they have clearly bad consequences in practice. I think he is very honest and tries to be very consistent in his views, even if they would take him into very odd conclusions. He has said very controversial things about like disabled people and babies and I really don't agree with all of his ideas there at all, but I can see how he formed them and I have to respect his consistency and boldness to say out loud his conclusions even if they are not what people expect to hear.
Social acceptance is often so much more important to people than philosophical consistency it sometimes makes it hard to be honest and question socially accepted truths while it's often what is required for actual moral progress. That's why I have to respect person who argues consistently for even seemingly absurd practices. They might actually have something important to say and their view has to be taken into account since someone will eventually invent it anyway and it's best to see why it doesn't work in practice before someone attempts to make it real. It's good to question everything every once in a while at least for the sake of an argument. Anyways I hope to leave Singer's other views out if this for now and focus on animal ethics.
He says at the end that:
"...the point of morality is not to be able to point your finger at somebody and say "hey you're doing something wrong!", the point is to think am I living a life which on the whole makes the world a better place, reduces suffering, sets an example for another people to follow who will also make the world a better place? Or am I somebody who is just going along with whatever is convenient and I'm not caring about the effect that it has on other sentient beings?"
I fully agree with mr. Singer in that regard. I remain unconvinced however that veganism actually has this effect. I think most vegans are exactly choosing veganism to point their fingers on others. Sure there are many who adopt it purely on compassion towards animals, but we need to have this same compassion towards people and towards wild animals that are harmed in plant production. We should also consider health of people, the source of pretty much all the morals in this world IMO. If we turn against each other like vegans turn against majority of humanity, we cannot ever "liberate animals" in practice or even offer them decent lives. I think veganism as dogmatic movement is completely failed in it's quest and should be reconsidered.
I think it's very complicated issue how to best help animals and what to eat to do so and we should continue having these discussions with vegans, ex-vegans, non-vegans and anti-vegans all bringing their points of view into discussion to figure this thing out. Vegans have hijacked this area of animal ethics and formed dogmatic inflexible moralistic position on this issue without solid basis and it should be deconstructed for constructing better lives for humans and other animals in the future.
So what you think about this discussion? What points you disagree on? Or do you agree with some points? What Singer doesn't get right in your opinion?
I didn't watch the entire thing so maybe I understood some points wrong too, so correct me if I made wrong assumptions. I skipped over the first parts of like exploitation thing since I was more interested in what Singer has to say about humane farming or flexibility of vegan diet.
Link to the audio and full transcript here.
I don't think Singer or Cowen are gurus in any serious sense, but Singer is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, which strikes me as the sort of thing a significant chunk of Decoding fans might dislike on principle, given that it is willing to publish views that are verboten in the identity politics side of the left. Plus "Journal of Controversial Ideas" sounds like the sort of thing a Weinstein would come up with, but in this case it seems the people involved are much more serious.
Here is what Singer had to say in the interview above about the usefulness of the Journal:
I’ve learned that there is a need for our journal, actually. I suppose I thought that when we began, but I wasn’t really sure. But one of the interesting things is that we have published a number of interesting papers — I’m not necessarily saying I agree with them — but papers that have worthwhile ideas that should be out there, which would not have got published otherwise, which were being rejected.
That happened in the most recent issue, which we just published at the end of April this year, with an article called “Merit in Science,” which actually had 29 co-authors. I think two of them were Nobel laureates. And it was objecting to the fact that, as the authors claimed, positions, research jobs, and also research grants were not simply going to those with the best qualifications or the greatest merit in scientific terms, but were going also on the criteria of maximizing diversity and inclusion.
The authors of that paper — as I say, a distinguished group of scientists — submitted it to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and were told that they wouldn’t publish it because it might be harmful to some people. I think they shopped it around to another couple of journals before somebody suggested they send it to us. It was published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. It was written about in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. We’ve had a hundred thousand views in the month since we published that issue, which for a peer-reviewed academic journal is pretty unusual.
Here is what he had to say about the topics that attract the most submissions, and why:
COWEN: If you look only at submissions and not acceptances, what’s the most common topic you see crossing the desk of the journal?
SINGER: At the moment, I would say it’s transgender issues.
COWEN: Because there are so few outlets where you can say your mind, or —
SINGER: There’s a lot of hostility about it.
So there are two things about a journal. One is, as I say, that we are prepared to publish controversial ideas that other places are not prepared to publish. The other is, we’re prepared to publish under a pseudonym if the authors don’t wish to be identified with the article. Roughly, I’d say about a third of the articles in each issue, authors prefer to publish under a pseudonym.
In the area of transgender studies, that’s because many academics have been severely abused and harassed and their lives made quite difficult if they have published things that were seen as transphobic, although I think that term is used far too broadly. We could simply say they were not accepting the idea that a person’s identification as a gender is necessarily the last word as to what their gender is.
I'm curious what is your reaction to Singer's remarks? Do you think something like The Journal of Controversial Ideas is useful? Is it too guruish? Why might trans-related topics attract the most submissions? Are the authors just overreacting in their apparent desire to be pseudonymous? Why do you suppose a group of distinguished scientists might not be able to otherwise find a venue to express opposition to certain sorts of DEI initiatives?
My overall reason for posting it here is that we frequently see the Decoders discuss the persecution complex that many gurus seem to possess, this seems somehow adjacent to that sort of thing while also being different in several respects.