I wanted to follow-up on one of the questions I asked (if you're willing to indulge me).
You frame yourself as a non-consequentialist.
Many moral questions are primarily personal. If I believe I have a moral obligation to treat people with respect, to not lie, cheat or steal, it makes sense that those are not based on consequentialism. They are an assessment of the moral weight on my choices.
But what if my moral sense directs me towards goals which are fundamentally public or collective. If I believe I have a moral obligation to end an unjust war or to oppose the use of gestational crates for raising pigs to what extent are my moral obligations based on the perceived efficacy of trying to reach those goals?
There's a quote from comedian Dick Gregory talking about his involvement in the civil rights movement in which he said (paraphrasing from memory) that as long as people were marching they weren't rioting.
Is that a consequentialist position? Should Gregory's moral judgement be based, in part, on his assessment of what marching accomplishes? Or is the moral judgement separate from the possible outcomes?
This might be a cavil, but if you want to keep the locution weirdness consistent while also highlighting the fact that we are eating other beings rather than some commodified product, shouldn't you use "the aquatic animals" or something along those lines, instead of "the seafood". The "food" part of "the seafood" presupposes a lot.
I like to say the animal names too! I don’t eat pigs and cows, not pork and beef. The people hurting animals so they can eat their flesh are the ones who need the obscurative term.
But why the definite article? Why *the* pigs and *the* chickens?
You should stop eating the cows and the fish, too.
yes, i think all RVs bring about badness for the violated -- this is part of what i think it is to wrong someone.. That's nice re Mack — I like his work on Locke very much — but when I'm working on a problem, I tend not to read stuff by people with similar views because i am very committed to working out my own answers!
ps i think that being the object of paternalism, even if it does some good for you, always includes the bad of risking crowding out your capacity to do the thing for yourself
Does that mean there is no genuine, all things considered, acts of paternalism then? (Paternalism being restricting an individual's freedom to improve their good).
"It seems clear, on this view, that I can go further than concluding that in the case of torturing the two people I have twice violated the right not to torture. Yes, I have committed two such specific wrongs. But I can also conclude that I have brought about ‘more badness’, and I can do it without buying into the aggregative notion of ‘adding to the badness in the world’."
Torturing two people brings about "more badness" in the world than torturing one, but I'm not seeing how that could be true without assuming some aggregative notion of badness, cashed out in consequentialist terms.
My solution is to only eat well taken care of animals from farmer’s market providers that can personally verify their care. My wife and I can get 4 meals out of one chicken by eating a large salad, carrots and quinoa with the chicken. So, smaller portions. I eat like the omnivore that I am. Consider the symbiotic relationship between pasture raised animals and humans. These animals have a life because we take care of them for a reason, food. I could never be a vegetarian because Ican’t
Continued: can only eat a little legumes. It’s not easy to have a balanced vegetarian diet, and for some, like me, impossible. When I study the diet of California Indians, I discovered the ingredients of a Paleolithic diet: eat everything edible in one’s environment. Fussy eaters didn’t survive to reproduce.
For what it's worth, I ended up writing a post in response which I hope you find interesting; it was fun to think through the points at which I was resisting the logic you presented: https://earnestnessisunderrated.substack.com/p/arguing-with-a-philosopher
fantastic! i will read it with great interest — thank you!
I wanted to follow-up on one of the questions I asked (if you're willing to indulge me).
You frame yourself as a non-consequentialist.
Many moral questions are primarily personal. If I believe I have a moral obligation to treat people with respect, to not lie, cheat or steal, it makes sense that those are not based on consequentialism. They are an assessment of the moral weight on my choices.
But what if my moral sense directs me towards goals which are fundamentally public or collective. If I believe I have a moral obligation to end an unjust war or to oppose the use of gestational crates for raising pigs to what extent are my moral obligations based on the perceived efficacy of trying to reach those goals?
There's a quote from comedian Dick Gregory talking about his involvement in the civil rights movement in which he said (paraphrasing from memory) that as long as people were marching they weren't rioting.
Is that a consequentialist position? Should Gregory's moral judgement be based, in part, on his assessment of what marching accomplishes? Or is the moral judgement separate from the possible outcomes?
This might be a cavil, but if you want to keep the locution weirdness consistent while also highlighting the fact that we are eating other beings rather than some commodified product, shouldn't you use "the aquatic animals" or something along those lines, instead of "the seafood". The "food" part of "the seafood" presupposes a lot.
that’s a good point -- thanks!
I like to say the animal names too! I don’t eat pigs and cows, not pork and beef. The people hurting animals so they can eat their flesh are the ones who need the obscurative term.
But why the definite article? Why *the* pigs and *the* chickens?
You should stop eating the cows and the fish, too.
adding the definite article signals some specificity and also adds to the weirdness!
Do all rights violations involve creating badness for the violated? What about genuine instance of paternalism?
I must say, I took this broad diet position until last July, then, I wrote a final article against factory farming then gave it all up.
On the fish, It think there is a decent argument to be made that it is no violation of a wild fish's rights to be eaten. Here: https://themusingindividualist.substack.com/p/a-tentative-defence-of-eating-wild
I know I've said it before, but whole piece is very close to Eric Mack's work.
yes, i think all RVs bring about badness for the violated -- this is part of what i think it is to wrong someone.. That's nice re Mack — I like his work on Locke very much — but when I'm working on a problem, I tend not to read stuff by people with similar views because i am very committed to working out my own answers!
ps i think that being the object of paternalism, even if it does some good for you, always includes the bad of risking crowding out your capacity to do the thing for yourself
Does that mean there is no genuine, all things considered, acts of paternalism then? (Paternalism being restricting an individual's freedom to improve their good).
there are acts committed for paternalistic reasons..
"It seems clear, on this view, that I can go further than concluding that in the case of torturing the two people I have twice violated the right not to torture. Yes, I have committed two such specific wrongs. But I can also conclude that I have brought about ‘more badness’, and I can do it without buying into the aggregative notion of ‘adding to the badness in the world’."
Torturing two people brings about "more badness" in the world than torturing one, but I'm not seeing how that could be true without assuming some aggregative notion of badness, cashed out in consequentialist terms.
An interesting article; I have some questions, and I may end up writing my own post in response; that's a complicated set of issues.
My solution is to only eat well taken care of animals from farmer’s market providers that can personally verify their care. My wife and I can get 4 meals out of one chicken by eating a large salad, carrots and quinoa with the chicken. So, smaller portions. I eat like the omnivore that I am. Consider the symbiotic relationship between pasture raised animals and humans. These animals have a life because we take care of them for a reason, food. I could never be a vegetarian because Ican’t
Continued: can only eat a little legumes. It’s not easy to have a balanced vegetarian diet, and for some, like me, impossible. When I study the diet of California Indians, I discovered the ingredients of a Paleolithic diet: eat everything edible in one’s environment. Fussy eaters didn’t survive to reproduce.