The moral footprint of animal products

Philosophy

Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating products of certain animal species. This way of thinking is represented in the typical division of four dietary attitudes. There are vegans, vegetarians, welfarists and ordinary meat -eaters. However, the common âall or nothingâ discussions between meat -eaters, vegans and vegetarians bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. I argue that if we want to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rightsâas is typically doneâbut, most of all, their body weight, life time in farms and time efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an assessment of animal products is much too simplified. If we assume some easily accepted premises, we can justify a thesis that, regardless of the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example, eating chicken can be 163 times morally worse than eating beef, drinking milk can be 58 times morally better than eating eggs, and eating some types of fish can be even 501 times worse than eating beef. In order to justify such a thesis there is no need to reform common morality by, for example, criticizing its speciesism. The thesis that some animal products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral grounds

The moral footprint of animal products Krzysztof Saja Accepted: 31 July 2012  The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating products of certain animal species. This way of thinking is represented in the typical division of four dietary attitudes. There are vegans, vegetarians, welfarists and ordinary meat-eaters. However, the common ''all or nothing'' discussions between meat-eaters, vegans and vegetarians bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. I argue that if we want to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rights-as is typically done-but, most of all, their body weight, life time in farms and time efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an assessment of animal products is much too simplified. If we assume some easily accepted premises, we can justify a thesis that, regardless of the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example, eating chicken can be 163 times morally worse than eating beef, drinking milk can be 58 times morally better than eating eggs, and eating some types of fish can be even 501 times worse than eating beef. In order to justify such a thesis there is no need to reform common morality by, for example, criticizing its speciesism. The thesis that some animal products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral grounds. Keywords Animals  Animal products  Animal welfarists  Animal rights  Ethics of killing  Vegetarianism  Veganism Introduction Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than on an individual moral assessment of eating products of certain animal species, which I refer to as the moral footprint of animal products. While many animal protectionists or abolitionists argue that at least people from developed countries should abandon meat eating or even the use of any animal products, their opponents criticize this claim and defend the common view of animals as producers of many goods for people. These ways of arguing are represented in the typical division into four dietary attitudes. There are vegans who refuse to use any animal products; vegetarians who do not accept eating any meat but consume other animal products such as eggs, milk, or honey; animal welfarists who do not condemn using animals, but try to minimize unnecessary suffering in farming; and the huge mass of ordinary people who eat without remorse everything permissible by law. However, these common ''all or nothing'' discussions between meat-eaters, vegans, and vegetarians bypass some very important factors in assessing dietary habits. What I argue and what I don't There are many philosophical disputes about the strength, justification, and content of animal rights. Animal activists and philosophers give different reasons why animals have K. Saja (&) Department of Philosophy, University of Szczecin, ul. Krakowska 61/69, 71-017 Szczecin, Poland e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com 123 Agric Hum Values DOI 10.1007/s10460-012-9402-x moral status and should be treated properly. The most common and important justifications for abandoning or carefully selecting animal products lie in condemnation of unjustified killing of animals, using them merely as a means or causing suffering during farming. For these reasons, vegetarians refuse to eat meat and many animal welfarists fight for farming methods that increase respect for animal rights or their standard of life. It is widely assumed that the animal well-being is an important moral factor. However, I argue that if we want to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we need to take into consideration not only the life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rights-as is typically the case-but also their body weight and life duration in farms. If we consider such commonly neglected factors and assume some described in the next section premises, we can show that regardless of the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example eating 1 kg of chicken can be preliminarily 163 times morally worse than eating 1 kg of beef, drinking 1 average daily portion of milk can be 58 times morally better than eating 1 average daily portion of eggs, and eating 1 kg of carp can be 501 times worse than 1 kg of beef. Such conclusions undermine not only the common ''all or nothing'' discussion about animal products consumption, but also have very important practical implications for a state policy of minimizing animal harm, which I sketch later in the paper. The thesis that animal products from some animal species are worse than others due to animal body weight and life duration in farms will be justified regardless of the reason for enhancing animal rights or the assumed ethics of killing. In order to broaden my argument, I show that my conclusions follow regardless of which particular ethics of protecting animals is considered. Therefore, I am not going to argue that one is sounder than any other. Instead, I present the argument in three different versions depending on the three most common answers to the question ''What are the main reasons to stop using animal products?'' These versions are entirely independent. In fact, I propose three different arguments of the same structure but treat them as one and explain jointly. Thus, for example, if we consider the first version of the argument we should take into account premises A1, B1, C, D1, E1, F1, the second version premises A2, B2, C, D2, E2, F2, and the third version premises A3, B3, C, D3, E3, F3. It is important to remember that the premises with the same letter (e.g., A1, A2, A3) are not different expressions of one and the same claim but rather different claims that play the same role in the paper. To fully justify all of them individually is beyond my scope. Therefore, I will present only a basic argument for their validity. The main thesis of the paper is only a conceptual claim, mainly that if we assume such common premises we should accept that there are very important moral differences between animal products from different animal species due to animal body weight and life duration in farms. The philosophical premises of the argument The first important premise of the argument is the platitude of common morality and the minimal claim of all animal activists. Roughly speaking, it says that animals are not stones and for that reason they have at least some minimal rights. I hope that only someone who believes that animals do not have any moral rights or that their suffering or killing is morally irrelevant would not accept it. However, I do not know anybody who defends such a view. Most people (at least in the USA) admit that there are morally better and worse ways of treating animals.1 The common belief that animals should have at least some minimal moral protection can be specified in different ways due to different reasons for moral status of animals or badness of harming and killing. If someone believes that animals have at least the right not to be killed without a good reason, she should accept the first version of the argument and the following simple premise: A1. It is morally wrong to kill sentient animals without important justification. Different people can give different reasons to support the above claim. Many just think-especially non-philosophers-that unjustified killing is bad as a simple, intuitive, unanalyzable moral fact that does not need any further explanation or justification. This fact is sometimes stated in terms of a moral right to life: killing is bad for the same reason that it is bad to violate a right to life without important justification (e.g., self-defense). Some other people may claim that the badness of killing lies in the death that it brings. In this case, killing is wrong because it steals a life and cannot be analyzed or reduced to the loss of possible future goods or preferences satisfaction. Such a belief is sometimes associated with the thesis about the sanctity of life. 1 In a 2004 survey conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University, 92 % of Ohio residents agreed that it is important that farm animals are well cared for, and 81 % said the well-being of farm animals is just as important as the well-being of pets (Rauch and Sharp 2005). Furthermore, 95 % of respondents to a nationwide telephone survey conducted by Oklahoma State University agreed with the statement: ''It is important to me that animals on farms are well cared for'' (Lusk et al. 2007). In a 2005 survey of Michigan residents conducted by researchers at Michigan State University, 92 % of respondents rated ''humane animal treatment'' as ''very important'' or ''somewhat important'' as a factor when purchasing animal products (Conner et al. 2008). K. Saja 123 The second version of the argument is based on a different type of ethics of killing because, even if we agree that it is morally wrong to kill sentient animals without important justification, we can give other reasons for that thesis. We can claim that the badness of killing depends not on any intrinsic evil of death or sanctity of life, but on deprivation of possible future goods or preventing satisfaction of future interests and preferences (Marquis 2007; McMahan 1988; Nagel 1970; Rachels 1986). In this version if we try to assess the moral footprint of animal products we need to assess the loss involved in the death of an animal from a certain species. This loss is determined by how many future goods are taken by killing an animal. If someone believes in such an ethics of killing, she should accept the second version of the argument and the second version of premise A: A2. It is morally wrong to deprive animals of possible future goods without important justification. The third version of the argument is presented for persons who do not believe that killing animals is prima facie bad. It corresponds with an assumption that the badness of animal products does not lie in animal death, but in harming animals through the bad conditions they experience before their death. For that reason in order to assess the moral footprint of animal products we have to be able to measure the quantity of harm (or benefit) done to animals during their lifetime. The most obvious types of harm are pain and suffering or unsatisfied preferences that are caused by farming (Singer 1977, 2006; Thomson 1990). The same version of the argument can be used if we believe that the wrongness done to animals lies in violating their rights not to be used as property (Francione 1995; Regan 1983). In order to assess this immoral usage we need to consider, as we also must when we are focused on suffering, the amount of time spent by animals in these harming conditions, and the quantity and quality of harm done during that time. However, because an aggregation of violations of rights may engender some problems, we will focus on suffering as the more common and less controversial reason to abandon eating animal products. If somebody thinks about the badness of animal products like animal welfarists2 or Peter Singer, she should accept the following premise: A3. It is morally wrong to cause suffering to animals without important justification. Every animal activist defends at least one of the above assumptions. However, there is no need to be a moral revisionist-as many animal protectionists are-to accept any of them. Most people agree that if we can minimize animal suffering or deaths and still achieve the objective of having plentiful, inexpensive food, then we should do it (Rauch and Sharp 2005; Lusk et al. 2007). Therefore, due to the different possible answers to what ''without important justification'' in these contexts could mean, I assume that most of us would accept at least one of the premises (A1, A2, or A3). The second premise (premise B) is a statement of fact about the acquisition of animal products in most developed countries. B1 (B2) are important for the first two versions of the argument. B1. (B2.) Breeding animals for food (meat, eggs, milk) causes them to be brought into existence and causes them to be killed. It is not practically possible to eat meat without killing an animal. Although we can imagine farming methods for non-meat products (e.g., eggs and milk) in which people are not directly involved in breeding new animals or killing those that are not economically efficient enough, almost every animal-sourced food consumed in developed countries is produced in farming conditions in which people are responsible for animal life and death. If we did not produce meat, eggs, or milk, we would not bring to life and kill pigs, chickens, and dairy cows. Every kind of animal product is involved in death of respected animals directly or indirectly. In the third version of the argument, which is focused on the well-being of animals, we should consider one other premise: B3. Farming affects well-being of animals positively or negatively depending on the farming method and the time spent in farms. In order to build the third version of the argument we need to assume that different farming methods have different effect on animal well-being, either positively or negatively (for the sake of simplicity I am not going to consider animals killed in the wild). Every type of farming for every animal species causes a different quality of life. On the one hand, many farmed animals, such as pigs, chickens, dairy cows, or fish in artificial tanks, are kept in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The standard of their life in many CAFOs is probably lower than it would be in nature. Livestock is harmed by close confinement systems (cages, crates) or lifetime confinement in 2 The animal welfare position holds that there is nothing inherently wrong with using animals for human purposes, such as food, clothing, entertainment, and research, but that it should be done in a humane way that minimizes unnecessary pain and suffering. In the UK, the Farm Animal Welfare Council was set up by the government to act as an independent advisor on animal welfare in 1979 and expresses its policy as five freedoms: from hunger and thirst; from discomfort; from pain, injury, or disease; to express normal behavior; and from fear and distress. The moral footprint 123 indoor sheds; discomfort and injuries caused by inappropriate flooring and housing; restriction or prevention of normal exercise and most natural foraging or exploratory behavior; restriction or prevention of natural maternal behavior; lack of daylight or fresh air and poor air quality in animal sheds; social stress and injuries caused by overcrowding; health problems caused by extreme selective breeding and management for fast growth and high productivity; reduced lifetime (longevity) of breeding animals (dairy cows, breeding sows); fast-spreading infections encouraged by crowding and stress in intensive conditions; de-beaking (beak amputation without pain killer) in the poultry and eggs industry to avoid pecking in overcrowded quarters; forced and overfeeding (by inserting tubes into the throats of ducks) in the production of foie gras, etc. On the other hand, some types of farming (e.g., extensive and ecological farming of beef cattle) can probably give a better standard of life than cattle could experience in the wild. In addition to the above premises we also should assume that: C. Bringing an animal into the world is not morally better than not bringing an animal into the world. It could be said that farming animals for food is good for animals even if they suffer. Meat production gives animals life and without this production these animals would not exist at all. However, such a claim and its implications are quite odd because comparing existence with non-existence produces many philosophical problems that it would be better to omit here. Moreover, even if causing an animal to exist can benefit that animal, nothing follows about the permissibility of killing it or causing it to suffer once it exists. First, causing an animal to exist benefits it only if its life is worth living, which arguably is not always the case for animals that are kept in CAFOs. Second, causing an animal to exist might entail a responsibility to care for it, not a permission to kill it. Third, once an animal exists, it may have rights that protect it, independently of how it came to exist. Fourth, it may be that once an animal exists, its interest in continuing to live outweighs any human interest that might be served by killing it. The weighing of interests seems independent of how the animal came into existence. In short, premise C is a stronger claim than I need in the argument. My argument should be persuasive even to most of those who deny premise C because of the considerations I have just noted.3 A fourth important premise (premise D) can be roughly stated as the claim that the quantity of victims matters morally. Its validity depends on accepting premise A, because if somebody does not believe that killing or harming animals without important justification is immoral, she will not agree with premise D either. If we admit that what makes animal products morally bad is a badness of killing animals (A1), which is the obvious precursor of eating meat and, most often, also a consequence of the production of eggs and milk, we need to assume the following premise: D1. It is N times morally worse to kill n times more sentient animals (if everything else remains the same). If we believe in the second reason for protecting animals (A2) and therefore focus on the second version of the argument, we need to accept: D2. It is N times morally worse to deprive n times more possible future goods (if everything else remains the same). The last version of premise D for the third version of the argument is focused on suffering or harm during farming: D3. It is N times morally worse to cause n times more suffering (if everything else remains the same). Let us imagine three cases in which you have only two options and everything else remains the same: to let 2 or 3 people die; to let 3 or 4 people die; to let 4 or 10 people die. The above premises assume that the first options are morally better and letting more rather than fewer people die is worse. If everything else remains the same, and the only thing that can be changed is the duration of feeling pain, the better option is to feel pain for as short a time as possible. The same holds true for animals. If we can test some medical research with an option that kills fewer laboratory rabbits and everything else remains the same we ought to take that option. Fewer total deaths and loss of possible future goods or pain are better than more. For every person who accepts an utilitarian ethics, the above thesis has to be perfectly obvious. In addition, most nonconsequentialists would agree that if everything else remains the same, numbers morally count. On the other hand, anybody who would claim that numbers do not morally count will not accept my argument. However, only a few philosophers would defend such a view about people (Taurek 1977; Timmermann 2004) and it would be even more uncommon to claim this about animals. The last conceptual premise (E) is important to allow cross-species moral comparisons. The formal structure of its more detailed versions (E1–E3) is: E. The badness of killing or causing suffering to an animal from species a is m times as much as the badness of killing or causing suffering to an animal from species b. Not every animal has the same right to life and the killing of any of them is not equally bad. Most people have 3 The above remarks about premise C I owe to a private conversation with Jeff McMahan. K. Saja 123 different attitudes toward killing parasites, pests, livestock, wild animals under protection, or pets. In Poland people much more value the lives of cats and dogs than those of pigs, chickens, and cows. We do not kill homeless domestic animals, but put them in an animal shelter. Nevertheless, we are very merciless to rats and mosquitoes. We do not think that the death of every compared animal species is equally bad. Moreover, there are natural differences in animal bodies and psychology. As Jeff McMahan (2002) argues, psychological capacity is related to the degree of psychological (prudential) unity within a life and that psychological unity is relevant to the assessment of the harm or loss involved in death. This psychological capacity is also relevant to an animal's capacity for well-being. Some animals are capable of much higher levels of well-being than others are capable of. Even if fish can feel pain their lost future goods are less valuable than the future goods of killed pigs, as the life of cognitively more developed animals is richer, more worth living, and worse to be shortened. Additionally, not every species has the same capability to feel pain. The nervous system of fish is not as developed as that of cows, so they could not be harmed as much by farming as cows. It can be argued that carp living in crowded tanks suffer less than pigs living alone in small steel and concrete cages. Similar treating of different animal species can produce different amounts of harm. The premise E and the above reservations show that to make a final and detailed comparison of the moral footprint of animal products, we would need to collect a lot of empirical data about the compared animals' psychology, physiology, and farming condition in order to assess the proper amount of harm caused by killing or farming condition of animals from different species. This is beyond the scope of this paper. However, in order to justify the thesis of the article that the ethics of consuming animal products ought to consider not just animal harm but also other factors such as animal body weight or life duration in farms, then initially we need to ignore these differences and for the sake of simplicity assume that killing or harming animals of different species is important equally. For that reason let us assume that (accordingly to the version of the argument): E1. The death of every farmed animal is equally bad. E2. For every farmed animal in an equal period of time of being dead the quantity and value of a loss of possible goods are equal. E3. For every farmed animal in an equal period of time the quantity and quality of suffering are equal. The premises E1–E3 are inconsequential. However, if we assume them for a moment we can later show that even if we know the relative physiological capacity of animals to feel pain and the real amount of harm or benefit caused by farming, this will not override the more important factors in assessing moral footprint of animal products such as animal body weight or longevity in farms. If we accept E1– E3 we will be able to see that animal capacity of wellbeing, amount of suffering, and harm is not as important as it is commonly believed. Commonly missed facts about animal products In order to show that there are preliminarily very large differences in the moral footprint of animal products from different animal species, it is important to take into consideration some other factors that are commonly missing in discussions about the ethics of diet. They are factual in nature and represent morally important statistical data about the farming and consumption of animals for food. In the following discussion I will rely on typical Polish practices of production and consumption of animal products such as beef, pork, chicken, carp (a traditional Christmas Eve fish in Poland), eggs, and milk. According to statistical data the average Pole consumes approximately 70 kg (154 lbs) of different meat products per year, but mostly from cattle, pigs, chicken, and fish. They also eat 200 eggs and drink 190 kg (418 lbs) of milk per year.4 If we want to assess and compare how much aggregate harm would be done to animals of certain species during an average 70 years of consumption by one person, it is useful to ignore the fact that meat eaters consume different kinds of meat products from different species. Therefore, for the sake of argument I will investigate how much aggregate harm would be done to animals of certain species if a typical meat-eater were to eat animal products from only one species for all of his or her life. The moral footprint of animal products depends also on the assumed reason for the badness of using animals. If the harm is caused by taking life or bringing death (A1), then according to premise D1 it would be n times morally worse to kill n times more animals of some kind. In this respect to assess the moral footprint of animal products we should include the quantity of animal deaths. In order to do this we need to know the average amount of animal products (meat, eggs, milk) per one animal. The important numbers are in Table 1. If one would consume only the meat of a single species, the aggregate quantity of killed animals per 70 years of consumption would vary a lot due to the weight of each killed animal. If someone would eat only beef they would be responsible for the deaths of 15 animals, but if they were to consume only chicken or carp, then they would be responsible for the deaths of 2,450 or 3,220 animals respectively. 4 All statistical data in this article are from the Polish Central Statistical Office (2010). The moral footprint 123 If we think that the wrongness of killing lies in the deprivation of possible future goods or preventing of satisfaction of future interests (A2), in order to construct the moral footprint of animal products we should take into consideration not only the quantity of animal deaths, but also how many years of life we take away from them for certain products. The important numbers are in Table 2. Even if the badness of killing lies in depriving possible future goods, the important differences between animal products from different species are similar to that from Table 1. We can estimate that 70 years of eating carp would cost 135,240 aggregate years of life in comparison to 710 years of life when consuming pork. If we are focused on the third version of the argument and believe that what is morally bad about animal products is causing animals to suffer (A3), then an important factor for assessing the moral footprint of animal products would be the aggregate product of quality of life and period of suffering in farming. If the harm lies in violating their rights not to be used or enslaved without important justification, then crucial would be the aggregate product of the level of injustice and time period of wrongdoing. In either case the time spent in farms would have a significant impact. Therefore, global well-being or wrongdoing in farms depends not only on the assumed quality of life or level of injustice, but mostly on the average farming time and the quantity of killed animals. The huge impact of these factors can be shown in Table 3. All of this can be summarized in Table 4, in which we compare the important consequences of eating 70 kg (154 lbs) of meat per year by one person who would consume only products from one species. If we assume the consumption of eggs and milk as equal to the average consumption in Poland (200 eggs per year and 190 kg milk per year), we can show in Table 5 preliminary consequences of 70 years of consuming typical amounts of eggs and milk. Another step in the argument requires some computed data from the above tables, i.e. assessments of the disproportion between the consequences of farming animals from different species. This data will vary depending on the version of the argument and the compared animal species. We can propose the following factual estimations: F1. Eating chicken in aggregate kills 163 times more animals than eating beef.5 F2. Farming carp in aggregate takes away 501 times more animal possible future goods than farming cattle for beef.6 F3. Farmed carp in aggregate suffer 358 times longer than farmed beef cattle.7 Table 1 Calculus of animal deaths Beef (beef cattle) Pork (pigs) Poultry (chickens) Fish (carps) Eggs Milk (a) Average animal products per one animal life 320 kg (704 lbs) 100 kg (220 lbs) 2 kg (4.4 lbs) 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs) 200 eggs 21,000 kg (46,200 lbs) (b) Quantity of killed animals of certain species to satisfy average animal products intake by 1 person in 1 year [70 kg (154 lbs)], who would consume only the product of a certain species (a / 70 kg) 0.22 lives 0.7 lives 35 lives 46 lives 2 lives* (assumed 200 eggs consumed per year) 0.036 lives** (assumed 190 kg (418 lbs) of milk consumed per year) (c) Quantity of killed animals per average time of consumption (70 years), if one would consume only the product of single species (b 9 70 years) 15 lives 49 lives 2,450 lives 3,220 lives 140 lives 2.5 lives All statistical data are from the Polish Central Statistical Office (2010) * One typical hen produces 200 eggs per year and lives in a farm for about 12 months. Therefore, the average consumer of eggs, who eats 200 eggs per year, is responsible for the death of 1 hen and the death of 1 male chick (cocks do not give eggs, therefore, male chicks are typically killed right after their birth) ** The amount of 0.036 cows killed per year is assessed on the assumption that the average consumption of milk per year is 190 kg per person, which is the typical amount in Poland. This would give 0.009 killed cows per year of average milk consumption. However, in modern dairy farms cows are inseminated about 3 times per life for better efficiency in milk production; therefore, typical byproduct of milk acquisition are 3 calves per dairy cow. For that reason the amount of 0.036 cattle killed per 1 year of typical milk consumption is a product of killed cows (0.009) and their three calves (3 9 0.009 calves) (0.009 cow ? (3 9 0.009 calves) = 0.036 cattle per 1 year.) 5 The number 163 is equal to the quantity of killed chickens from Table 4 row (c) divided by the quantity of killed beef cattle (2,450/ 15 = 163). 6 The number 501 is equal to the quantity of the aggregate years of shorten lifespan of carps from Table 4 row (g) divided by the quantity of aggregate years of shortened lifespan of beef cattle (135,240/ 270 = 501). 7 The number 358 is equal to the quantity of aggregate period of suffering of carps from Table 4 row (h) divided by the quantity of aggregate period of animal suffering of beef cattle (10,733/ 30 = 358). K. Saja 123 The argument If we choose one version of the argument and take for granted all premises A to F, we can reconstruct it in few simple steps. Its different versions, which depend on the different philosophies of the badness of killing or using animals, could be presented by changing the numbers of the appropriate premises of the argument. If we think that animals have at least the right not to be killed without a good reason, we can show the argument in the following way: A1. It is morally wrong to kill sentient animals without important justification. Table 2 Calculus of taken animals' possible future goods Beef (beef cattle) Pork (pigs) Poultry (chickens) Fish (carps) Eggs Milk (c) Quantity of killed animals per average human time of consumption (70 years), if one would consume only the product of a single species 15 49 2,450 3,220 140 2.5 (d) Average animal lifespan in farms (months) 24 6 4.5 40 6* 30** (e) Normal average lifespan, if animals would not be killed (years) 20 15 10 45 10 20 (f) Years of shortened lifespan of one animal by killing it (e d) 18 14.5 9.5 42 9.5 17.5 (g) Aggregate years of shortened lifespan by killing animals during 70 years of animal product consumption (c 9 f) 270 710 23,275 135,240 1,330 43.8 * An average hen lives on a farm for 1 year and male chicks are killed after their birth. Therefore, average animal lifetime in egg production is 0.5 years ** An average dairy cow lives on a farm for 4 years. However, it breeds 3 calves, which live 2 years on average. Therefore, I estimate that the average lifetime of cattle on dairy farms is 2.5 years Table 3 Calculus of animal suffering in farming Beef (beef cattle) Pork (pigs) Poultry (chickens) Fish (carps) Eggs Milk (c) Quantity of killed animals per average human time of consumption (70 years), if one would consume only the product of a single species 15 lives 49 lives 2,450 lives 3,220 lives 140 lives 2.5 lives (d) Average animal lifespan in farms (months) 24 6 4.5 40 6 30 (h) Aggregate time of farming animals per average human lifetime (c 9 d) (years) 30 25 919 10,733 70 6.3 (i) Global well-being of animals in farming if we assume the same quality of life of different species (-1 9 h) -30 -25 -919 -10,733 -70 -6.3 Table 4 Important consequences of meat consumption Animal products Killed animals for one person per 70 years of animal product consumption (c) Aggregate years of shortened lifespan by killing animals during 70 years of animal product consumption (g) (years) Aggregate average period of animal suffering during 70 years of consumption (h) (years) Beef 15 270 30 Pork 49 710 25 Chicken 2,450 23,275 919 Carp 3,220 135,240 10,733 Table 5 Important consequences of non-meat animal products Animal products Killed animals for one person per 70 years of average amount of consumption (c) Aggregate years of shortened lifespan by killing animals during 70 years of average amount of consumption (g) (years) Aggregate period of animal suffering during 70 years of average amount of consumption (h) (years) Eggs* 140 1,330 70 Milk 2.5 43.8 6.3 * The above comparison assumes the typical way of acquiring animal products in Poland. We can of course imagine a vegetarian who eats eggs bought from ecological farms where male chicks are not killed and live with hens until natural death. Such eggs do not cost 2 bird lives per year. But most eggs eaten do. The same is true for other animal products The moral footprint 123 B1. Breeding animals for food (meat, eggs, milk) causes them to be brought into existence and to be killed. C. Bringing an animal into the world is not morally better than not bringing an animal into the world. D1. It is N times morally worse to kill n times more sentient animals (if everything else remains the same). E1. The death of every farmed animal is equally bad. F1. Eating chicken in aggregate kills 163 times more animals than eating beef. Therefore, eating chicken is preliminarily 163 times morally worse than eating beef. If we think that the moral significance lies not in animal deaths, but in the suffering in farming, the reconstructed argument would be the following: A3. It is morally wrong to cause suffering to animals without important justification. B3. Farming affects well-being of animals positively or negatively depending on the farming method and the time spent in farms. C. Bringing an animal into the world is not morally better than not bringing an animal into the world. D3 It is N times morally worse to cause n times more suffering (if everything else remains the same). E3. For every farmed animal in an equal period of time the quantity and quality of suffering are equal. F3. Farmed carp in the aggregate suffer 358 times longer than farmed cattle for beef. Therefore, eating carp is preliminarily 358 times morally worse than eating beef. The second version of the argument can be constructed in a similar fashion. The conclusions, which are comparative judgments about the preliminary badness of some specified unit of different animal products (for example 1 kilogram), can be presented in one simple table. In the rows of Table 6 different animal products are compared by asking how many times one unit of a product is preliminarily worse than another. The results are divided into three columns according to three different factors of animal products badness: the first shows how many times one product is preliminarily worse than another according to the quantity of deaths, the second is according to preventing future goods, and the third is according to the suffering in farms or violating the right not to be treated as property. If we accept premises A1–F1, the table shows that, for example, eating 1 kg of carp is 214 times morally worse than eating 1 kg of beef, 1 kg of chicken is 50 times worse than 1 kg of pork, and 1 average daily egg ration is 56 times worse than 1 typical daily milk ration. In the light of the above data we can fully answer the question about the validity of premises E1–E3. Now it can be seen that the disproportions of the preliminary badness of one unit of animal product of different species (for example 1 kilogram of meat or one average daily ration of milk or eggs) presented in Table 6 are much bigger than the presumptive cognitive or moral diversities of different species. Even if there is some disproportion about the right to life, degree of psychological unity within a life, capability of suffering, or farming conditions of different species, it would be very odd to claim that, for example, fish suffer 300 times less than cattle in the equal period of time or that a chicken's life is morally worth 50 times less than a pig's life. Even if we agreed that the life of a fish is, for example, 10 times less valuable than that of a pig because fish are 10 times less cognitively developed and can feel 10 times less pain accordingly, it would still not be enough to make the claim that eating 1 kg of fish is as bad as eating 1 kg of pork. The preliminary differences of the moral footprint of meat from carps and pigs are much bigger than 10 and they seem bigger than any cognitive disproportion between the compared vertebrates. If someone wants to prove that, for example, eating 1 kg of carp is morally equal to eating 1 kg of beef or pork because carp suffer less, they would have to show accordingly that, for Table 6 Preliminary comparison of the moral footprint of animal products* Preliminary comparison of two animal products How many times one unit of animal product is preliminarily worse than a second one due to different factors of badness of animal production (killing, taken future goods, suffering in farming) Death/killing (c) Loss of future (e) Suffering in farming (h) Carp to beef (n times worse) 214 501 358 Chicken to beef (n times worse) 163 86 30 Pork to beef (n times worse) 3 0.4 0.8 Chicken to pork (n times worse) 50 107 37 Eggs to beef (n times worse) 9 10 2 Eggs to pork (n times worse) 3 12 3 Eggs to milk (n times worse) 56 30 11 * All of the numbers in Table 6 were computed as described in Footnotes 5–7 K. Saja 123 example, carp are at least 358 times less capable of suffering than beef cattle. And this is probably false. If someone would claim that eating 1 kg of chicken is not worse than eating 1 kg of pork because pigs can have richer and more valuable future lives than chickens, then they would have to prove that a pig's future life is richer or more valuable at least 107 times more than a chickens. This seems false as well. Speaking more formally, if we would claim that despite the data from Table 6 the eating of one unit of animal product (e.g., meat, eggs or milk) is not worse than the eating of another product (e.g., pork or beef) because of x (e.g., cognitive abilities and degree of psychological unity within a life of animals), we have to prove that factor x differentiates animal species at least as much as is showed in Table 6. However, because morally significant aggregate body weight and lifespan of animals of different species can differ by a factor of a hundred or more, there is only a very low probability that other morally important factors would be able to overbalance them. Important implications The thesis that animal body weight and life duration in farms are significant but commonly neglected moral features has important practical implications. First of all, if someone tries to minimize the harm done to animals caused by producing food from them, they should consider not only supporting farming methods that increase respect for animal rights or their standard of life-as it is typically the case- but, first of all, try to promote eating beef and pork rather than chicken and fish. If minimizing harm to animals would be our aim, a much bigger impact could be achieved not by consuming only ecological, low-suffering animal products, but mostly by choosing products from bigger animals like beef cattle. Despite the strangeness of such a conclusion, choosing and promoting big body weight and efficient animal products is the most rational way of minimizing animal harm (except by being a vegan). If we would eat only meat from such animals we would prevent much more pain, death, or loss of possible future goods than by trying to consume, for example, well-farmed chickens. Even if the quality of life in farming is important, more important is animal weight and farming time. Moreover, the traditional division of diets made by food products types (vegetable, meat, non-meat animal products) is irrelevant from the ethical point of view. Not well-informed vegetarians who eat eggs produced in CAFOs can cause much more animal harm than a person who eats only red meat without eggs. Drinking milk could be much less harmful than eating eggs. Promoting ''white meat'' (poultry, fish) can be more wrong than promoting a normal meat diet. If someone cannot abandon meat eating, maybe the best ethical option would be to consume beef. The same is true for welfarist meat-eaters who accept common morality, believe in anthropocentrism in ethics, but think that animals have some minimal rights. If we can fulfill our dietary aims of eating meat without increasing unjustified or unnecessary animal deaths and suffering, we should do that. Everybody who accepts that mere diversity of animal products on our plates does not justify, for example, 300 times more animal deaths or suffering should change their diet. Most philosophers or animal activists, who try to change our common morality of using animals for consumption, focus on violating animal rights or the bad conditions in farming. Many developed countries try to legally restrict some harmful forms of treating animals such as long transportation for slaughter without stops, battery cages for egg-laying hens, de-beaking of chickens, confinement of sows during pregnancy and for most of their adult life, and slaughtering animals without stunning them beforehand. However, if we want to reduce animal harm, then there are more important factors than the quality of life of livestock that should be taken into consideration. If my argument is correct and we want to construct a detailed moral footprint of animal products, then we should take into account not only life quality (preference satisfactions) during farming and violation of animal rights, but, first and foremost, animal body weight and lifetime animals spend in farms. Acknowledgments I would like to extend a note of gratitude to Renata Pilarczyk, Jeff McMahan, Harvey S. James, Adriana Schetz, Urszula Zarosa, and anonymous reviewers from Agriculture and Human Values for their very helpful and valuable comments. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. References Central Statistical Office. 2010. Statistical Yearbook of Agriculture, Warsaw: Zaklad Wydawnictw Statystycznych. http://www.stat. gov.pl/gus/5840_4127_PLK_HTML.htm. Accessed 26 July 2012. Conner, D.S., V. Campbell-Arvai, and M.W. Hamm. 2008. Consumer preferences for pasture-raised animal products: results from Michigan. Journal of Food Distribution Research 39(2): 12–25. Francione, G.L. 1995. Animals, property, and the law. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Lusk, J.L., F.B. Norwood, and R.W. Prickett. 2007. Consumer preferences for farm animal welfare: results of a nationwide telephone survey. Department of Agricultural Economics, Oklahoma State University. http://asp.okstate.edu/baileynorwood/ Survey4/files/InitialReporttoAFB.pdf. Accessed 26 July 2012. Marquis, D. 2007. An argument that abortion is wrong. In Ethical theory: An anthology, ed. R. Shafer-Landau, 439–450. Oxford: Blackwell. McMahan, J. 1988. Death and the value of life. Ethics 99(1): 32–61. The moral footprint 123 McMahan, J. 2002. The ethics of killing: Problems at the margins of life. New York: Oxford University Press. Nagel, T. 1970. Death. Noûs 4(1): 73–80. Rachels, J. 1986. The end of life: Euthanasia and morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rauch, A., and J.S. Sharp. 2005. Ohioans' attitudes about animal welfare. A topical report from the 2004 Ohio Survey of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Issues. Columbus, OH: Social Responsibility Initiative, Department of Human and Community Resource Development, The Ohio State University. http://ohio survey.osu.edu/pdf/2004_Animal_report.pdf. Accessed 26 July 2012. Regan, T. 1983. The case for animal rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Singer, P. 1977. Animal liberation. New York: Avon Books. Singer, P. (ed.). 2006. In defense of animals: The second wave. Oxford: Blackwell. Taurek, J.M. 1977. Should the numbers count? Philosophy and Public Affairs 6(4): 293–316. Thomson, J. 1990. The realm of rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Timmermann, J. 2004. The individualist lottery: how people count, but not their numbers. Analysis 64(282): 106–112. Author Biography Krzysztof Saja is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Szczecin in Poland. K. Saja


Review of Roger Crisp, _The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's_ Methods of Ethics

Philosophy

This is a critical review of Roger Crisp's The Cosmos of Duty. The review praises the book but, among other things, takes issue with some of Crisp's criticisms of Sidgwick's view that resolution of the free will problem is of limited significance to ethics and with Crisp's claim that in Methods III.xiii Sidgwick defends an axiom of prudence that undergirds rational egoism.

-10-24, 9:08 PMThe Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 1 of 5http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/70776-the-cosmos-of-duty-henry-sidgwicks-methods-of-ethics/ College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2016.10.17 Author Roger Crisp The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics Published: October 23, 2016 Roger Crisp, The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, Oxford University Press, 2015, 256pp., $60.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198716358. Reviewed by Anthony Skelton, University of Western Ontario A flurry of attention is currently being paid to Henry Sidgwick. There have been more monographs devoted exclusively to him published in the last dozen years than in the whole of the last century. The most notable of this recent work is David Phillips's Sidgwickian Ethics (Oxford 2011) and Mariko Nakano-Okuno's Sidgwick and Contemporary Utilitarianism (Palgrave Macmillan 2011). Together with recent treatments of Sidgwick by Terence Irwin and Thomas Hurka, these works usher in a new, more sophisticated stage in the study of Sidgwick and the period in which he worked.[1] The lion's share of this work is devoted to Sidgwick's most fertile philosophical achievement, The Methods of Ethics,[2] the "great, drab book", as Derek Parfit aptly called it. Parfit holds that Sidgwick's book is, of the significant texts in the history of ethics, the one with the "largest number of true and important claims."[3] Roger Crisp's penetrating and elegantly composed book is written in light of Parfit's claim and is in part designed to demonstrate which of Sidgwick's views qualify, in Crisp's estimation, as true and important. He writes that In my view, Sidgwick is largely correct in his quietist non-naturalist . . . meta-ethics, his intuitionist epistemology, his placing of consequentialist ethics ahead of deontology, his giving weight to both impartial and personal perspectives in the 'dualism of practical reason', and his hedonistic view of well-being. But more broadly he excels in seeing which concepts, distinctions, arguments, and positions are of most ethical significance, and in elucidating them. (vii) In addition, Crisp has the aim, shared with Phillips and with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, authors of The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (Oxford 2014), of encouraging others to read, teach, and (more generally) engage with Sidgwick's work and to see him as the most important historical source in the utilitarian tradition. Of the recent works on Sidgwick, Crisp's is by far the most pedagogically valuable; it outlines and evaluates, often in painstaking detail, almost all aspects of Sidgwick's Methods, making it an ideal resource for those looking for insight into his views and their deficiencies. The book contains seven chapters. Chapter one focuses on Sidgwick on the nature of ethics, including his account of the meaning of 'ought', of moral motivation, and of ethical methods and principles. Chapter two focuses on his view of the ethical significance of the free will problem. Chapter three details, among other things, his account of pleasure and his arguments for hedonism. Chapter four engages his position on moral knowledge, including his account of self-evidence, and the propositions he thinks possess this characteristic. Chapters five and six relate Sidgwick's account of virtue and his analysis of common-sense morality, respectively. Chapter seven deals with Sidgwick's utilitarianism, egoism and his dualism of practical reason, the claim that utilitarianism and egoism are coordinate but conflicting requirements of reason. 2016-10-24, 9:08 PMThe Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 2 of 5http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/70776-the-cosmos-of-duty-henry-sidgwicks-methods-of-ethics/ The most interesting chapters are two and four. In chapter two, Crisp engages Sidgwick's view that resolution of the free will problem is of "limited" ethical significance (ME 66).[4] Resolution of the problem would, Sidgwick thinks, have serious ethical significance were the "affirmation or negation of the Freedom of the Will" (ME 68) to modify views either about the ends commonly taken to be non-instrumentally valuable -happiness and perfection (ME 9) -or about the fittest means to them. Which view of the will we adopt affects neither our claims about ends nor about means (ME 66-70), except in some "exceptional circumstances" (ME 71).[5] Sidgwick does, however, note that whether one takes up libertarianism or determinism does significantly affect one's views of "merit", "demerit", "desert", and "responsibility" (ME 71). The libertarian uses these notions in a backward looking, retributive sense; the determinist uses them in a forward looking, deterrence sense. The gap between the two views on such issues is, he thinks, "theoretically very wide" (ME 72). Nevertheless, he says, "this admission can hardly have any practical effect" (ME 72; also 285): "it is practically impossible to be guided, either in remunerating services or in punishing mischievous acts, by any other considerations than those which the Determinist interpretation of desert would include" (ME 72).[6] This seems to follow, in part, because "it does not seem possible to separate in practice that part of a man's achievement which is due strictly to his free choice from that part which is due to his original gift of nature and to favouring circumstances" (ME 285; also 291). Crisp raises a number of penetrating criticisms of Sidgwick's position. He contends that Sidgwick is wrong that resolution of the free will problem has no impact on the ends worth pursuing for their own sake. He thinks that happiness might be affected for the libertarian were she to discover her view to be false, for imagine that our libertarian had taken much pleasure in her accomplishments and her moral integrity, attributing both to free and unconstrained choices. Especially in the case of moral integrity, it is not unlikely that the belief in determinism may affect these more sophisticated, intentional pleasures, and indeed cause her a certain amount of unpleasant regret. (51-52) In reply, Sidgwick could concede that the libertarian's loss of belief in her view makes a difference to what she gets pleasure from, but deny that the loss licenses the conclusion that pleasure lacks non-instrumental value. And it is open to Sidgwick to argue that if libertarians wish to retain the pleasure they possess, they may ignore certain truths in order to do so. Crisp also argues that the claim that perfection is non-instrumentally valuable is affected by one's stance on the free will question. Sidgwick holds that various physical and intellectual excellences and "excellences of character which we call virtues" including courage, justice and temperance, "do not become less admirable because we can trace their antecedents in a happy balance of inherited dispositions developed by a careful education" (ME 68; also 349). Crisp concedes that Sidgwick might be right that when viewed "merely" as perfections the value of certain intellectual and physical perfections and excellences of character remains whatever one's view of free will (52). But, he argues, if such things are viewed as personal accomplishments, and if admiration is in part for the agent choosing them, "the libertarian may see determinism undermining their value" (52). Sidgwick cannot argue against Crisp's claim. That would be to make a move in the debate in which he is trying to avoid making a move. He will have to reply by insisting on the difference in common sense between thinking something is good and admiring one's responsibility for producing it. He could argue that our view of the value of a perfection remains, though our view of the nature of one's responsibility for it does not, but that this has no practical impact. That is, he can fall back on his claim that the view of responsibility, merit and so on, on which our admiration putatively rests is not viable in practice. 2016-10-24, 9:08 PMThe Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 3 of 5http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/70776-the-cosmos-of-duty-henry-sidgwicks-methods-of-ethics/ Crisp thinks this won't do. He argues that Sidgwick is here (as elsewhere) rather too "complacent about the effects of utilitarian thinking on our moral and judicial practices" (ME 55). Crisp thinks that a better option for Sidgwick is to retain the common-sense, retributive notions of praise and blame, merit and demerit as part of an esoteric utilitarian morality (55). For they are potentially "very useful" (55). Crisp might be right, but he misses an opportunity here to make a different criticism of Sidgwick. Sidgwick claims that the divide between the libertarian and the determinist is, though theoretically quite wide, practically insignificant as regards the issues of responsibility, desert, merit, and so on. This is an instance of Sidgwick managing in practice a conflict that he cannot manage or solve in theory. But his view relies on the assumption that judgements about the future effects of punishing or holding responsible or meriting are more reliable than judgements about the past relative impact of choice and circumstance on an individual's deeds. It is not clear that this is a plausible assumption even by his own lights, for he raises serious concerns about the reliability of determining the outcome of acts. In addition, this might be a case in which Sidgwick's aim of eliminating appeal to practical judgement in ethical decision making -an important theme in Cosmos (viii-ix) -is working behind the scenes: for if there is a fact of the matter about how much one's achievement is due to choice and how much to circumstance, but this is hard to detect, judgement may be needed to pronounce on it. If one is keen on practical judgement, one may find Sidgwick's argument less compelling. Chapter four deals with Sidgwick's intuitionist argument for utilitarianism. One of the crucial aims of Methods is to show that utilitarianism is justified, at least in part, by the fact that it rests on a set of self-evident axioms. It is typical to think that Sidgwick holds in Book III.xiii of Methods that there are four such axioms, one on universality, one on prudence, one on personal irrelevance, and one on promoting the general good. The last two, for Sidgwick, serve as the "rational basis" of utilitarianism (ME 387). The axiom of prudence expresses, for many, a commitment only to temporal neutrality. Crisp argues otherwise: the axiom of prudence (P1) is that "One ought to aim at one's good on the whole" (117). This is a surprising claim. Sidgwick says that he thinks he has shown in the chapter that "Utilitarianism is . . . the final form into which Intuitionism tends to pass, when the demand for really self-evident first principles is rigorously pressed" (ME 388). He cannot say this if at the same time he accepts P1 as ultimate, for this is not a utilitarian principle. Sidgwick sometimes says, more modestly, that he arrives in his "search for really clear and certain ethical intuitions . . . at the fundamental principle of Utilitarianism" (ME 387): that "One ought to aim at the universal good" (120; also ME 96, 418). He might hold this in conjunction with P1 but it is puzzling still that he does not see the potential conflict between these principles. Crisp suggests that this is not puzzling. At this point in Methods, he says, "Sidgwick has identified no such conflict . . . between my own good and the utilitarian end" (119-120n43). But such a conflict is not hard to see, especially for someone who, as Crisp allows, "reflected hard and long on his principles" (122), and for someone who has already noted, as Sidgwick had, that common-sense morality and egoism conflict and that benevolence requires uncompensated sacrifice (ME 162-175, 382). Crisp thinks that Sidgwick does not see the conflict between prudence and benevolence until later in Methods when he notes that "the distinction between any one individual and any other is real and fundamental" (ME 498). On this distinction egoism is said to rest. But this seems odd even by Crisp's own lights. He holds that the distinction is latent in the defense of P1: "P1 seems self-evident to Sidgwick because it assumes the significance of the distinction between persons. But it is not inferred from that distinction: it involves it" (117; italics in original). Again, for someone reflecting hard and long it would be surprising not to have noticed the conflict this generates with other things said in the same place. Crisp's claim also mars Sidgwick's appeal to Kant and Clarke in showing that his axioms are not disputed by those well placed to assess them (ME 384-386). Kant famously denies that there are categorical imperatives of prudence. He cannot accept P1. 2016-10-24, 9:08 PMThe Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 4 of 5http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/70776-the-cosmos-of-duty-henry-sidgwicks-methods-of-ethics/ Odd then that Sidgwick appeals to him here. Clarke might be more plausible. As Sidgwick notes, Clarke holds that "it is not 'truly reasonable that men by adhering to virtue should part with their lives'" (ME 120). But even Clarke does not agree with P1. According to Sidgwick, Clarke holds only that the "Rule of Righteousness with respect to ourselves" is "derivative and subordinate" (ME 384n4). Let me end with two further points. Sidgwick is a towering figure in the history of moral philosophy in the analytic tradition. He packs a serious, historically informed philosophical punch, and is thought by many to offer powerful arguments for some of the positions favoured by contemporary utilitarians. It comes as no surprise, then, that he receives harsh treatment of the sort on display in, for example, Irwin and Hurka. One ought to have no truck with this. But for such a towering figure it really does vex the philosophical mind that Sidgwick rarely gets the treatment devoted, say, to Kant and Mill, in which painstaking efforts are made to reconstruct all the arguments, including the howlers, and, moreover, to do so in light of a complete and comprehensive survey of the full range of their philosophical and related output. Crisp tells us explicitly that his focus is on Methods. There is one case in which this focus is unfortunate. One of his worries is that Sidgwick "ignores the possibility of practical judgement in particular cases" (190; also viii-ix, 4, 104, 114, 145, 192-194, 224n42, 231). Had he done otherwise, Crisp thinks, Sidgwick could have avoided "not only the danger of conflict between utilitarian and non-utilitarian principles, but the actual conflict between egoism and utilitarianism he so significantly failed to resolve at the close of the Methods" (4). But it is not clear that Sidgwick avoided appeal to practical judgement entirely. It is true that in Methods he is keen to exclude it in theory from our ethical decision making. He wants to articulate a view that excludes reliance on practical judgement of the sort on display in Aristotle and Ross. However, he was less willing to see it excluded entirely from practical ethical decision making. In a letter discussing the views he developed in Practical Ethics,[7] Sidgwick remarks that I have no moral scales in which I can balance . . . disparate values . . . Practically, I find that when my mind comes to a clear decision on a particular problem of this class, it is not because I can establish any sort of 'ratio of exchange' -so much material gain = so much moral loss -but because one or other of the values compared, either the gain or the loss, seems to be much more certain than the other in the particular case.[8] In a paper discussing the role of the philosopher and the non-philosopher in the resolution of practical ethical issues, he argues that appeal to the judgement of both is paramount in practical ethics.[9] He thinks that the philosopher's ethical judgements need to be checked by "the moral judgement of persons with less philosophy but more special experience" (PE 33). He is in particular keen on the moral judgements of "those persons, to be found in all walks and stations of life, whose earnest and predominant aim is to do their duty", including and especially "the moral judgements -and especially the spontaneous unreflected judgments on particular cases, which are sometimes called moral intuitions" (PE 37). Sidgwick seems, then, to accept in practice what he appears to eschew in theory. It would have been helpful to receive from Crisp some insight into why Sidgwick felt willing to accommodate practical judgement in some arenas but not in others. Crisp's treatment of Sidgwick on this question would have benefitted from being conducted in light of the social and political context in which Sidgwick worked. It might have helped us to see why he appeals to the practical judgement of some but not of others and why he aimed to remove it from ethical theory but not practice. 2016-10-24, 9:08 PMThe Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 5 of 5http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/70776-the-cosmos-of-duty-henry-sidgwicks-methods-of-ethics/ One final point. Crisp agrees with Parfit that Sidgwick's Methods contains a large number of true and important claims. However, when it comes to the arguments that Sidgwick provides for the true and important claims that Crisp thinks that Sidgwick offers (noted above), Crisp raises compelling objections. He thinks, for example, that Sidgwick's argument for hedonism fails (95), that the argument for utilitarianism is not persuasive (129, 220), that Sidgwick's epistemology is instable (103-107, 212), and that the dualism of practical reason has less of an impact than Sidgwick allowed (213). This should, it seems, lead one to be a bit skeptical about these very same conclusions. [1] Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Volume III: From Kant to Rawls (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Thomas Hurka, British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing (Oxford University Press, 2014). [2] Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, seventh edition (Hackett, 1981). Cited in the text as ME. [3] Derek Parfit, On What Matters, vol. I (Oxford University Press, 2011), xxxiii. [4] Sidgwick concedes that the adoption of determinism impacts on some views about the means to the ends of happiness and perfection (ME 69), on remorse (ME 71), and on requite (ME 72, 349). This, for some, might count as impact that is of more than limited ethical significance. [5] Sidgwick holds that in some cases the acceptance of determinism might "weaken the operation of the moral motive" (ME 67). [6] Of desert Sidgwick says: "The only tenable Determinist interpretation of Desert is, in my opinion, the Utilitarian: according to which, when a man is said to deserve reward for any services to society, the meaning is that it is expedient to reward him, in order that he and others may be induced to render similar services by the expectations of similar rewards" (ME 284n2). [7] Henry Sidgwick, Practical Ethics: A Collection of Addresses and Essays, second edition (Swan Sonnenschein, 1909). Cited in the text as PE [8] Arthur Sidgwick and Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir (Macmillan, 1906), 569. [9] Henry Sidgwick, "The Aims and Methods of an Ethical Society," in Practical Ethics: A Collection of Addresses and Essays, second edition (Swan Sonnenschein, 1909), 23-51. Copyright © 2016 ISSN: 1538 1617 College of Arts and Letters Accessibility Information Notre Dame, IN


Consequentialism & Machine Ethics: Towards a Foundational Machine Ethic to Ensure the Right Action of Artificial Moral Agents

Philosophy

In this paper, I argue that Consequentialism represents a kind of ethical theory that is the most plausible to serve as a basis for a machine ethic. First, I outline the concept of an artificial moral agent and the essential properties of Consequentialism. Then, I present a scenario involving autonomous vehicles to illustrate how the features of Consequentialism inform agent action. Thirdly, an alternative Deontological approach will be evaluated and the problem of moral conflict discussed. Finally, two bottom-up approaches to the development of machine ethics are presented and briefly challenged.

Consequentialism & Machine Ethics Towards a Foundational Machine Ethic to Ensure the Right Action of Artificial Moral Agents Josiah Della Foresta McGill University 1 Introduction In this paper, I will argue that Consequentialism represents a kind of ethical theory that is the most plausible to serve as a basis for a machine ethic. First, I will outline the concept of an artificial moral agent and the essential properties of Consequentialism. Then, I will present a scenario involving autonomous vehicles to illustrate how the features of Consequentialism inform agent action. Thirdly, an alternative Deontological approach will be evaluated and the problem of moral conflict discussed. Finally, two bottom-up approaches to the development of machine ethics will be presented and briefly challenged. When 23 of the world's most eminent artificial intelligence experts were asked for their predictions regarding the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the average date offered was 2099.1 Further noting the promise and peril the development of AGI represents, this century may come to be defined by humanity's disposition towards and progress in the development of ethically-informed machine intelligence. 1. Ford 2018. 1 Of course, there exist many candidate normative principles and values that an AGI might be designed with, and it is not altogether obvious which principles and values ought to be used as opposed to others. Further complicating matters is the question of how to encode the chosen principles and values such that an AGI will consistently behave as prescribed. While the former question is of primary concern, the latter will also be considered. 2 Artificial Moral Agents & Consequentialism in Kind It is typically clear what makes a machine good. If it functions as it is expected to, it is a good machine. Furthermore, this expected function is narrow such that the machine is not expected to deviate from set instructions and success or failure in accomplishing said instructions are readily determinable. Yet, an artificial general intelligence would be a sapient machine possessing an open-ended set of instructions where success or failure lies beyond the scope of merely completing a task. This machine would be autonomous and act in a world populated by moral agents: humans. Indeed, an AGI would itself be a moral agent–an artificial moral agent (AMA). Assuming that an AGI would necessarily be an AMA, we are confronted with the pressing concerns introduced above: how ought an AMA behave in the social world, and how might it come to behave that way? Following the introduced thesis, this section will define what is meant by Consequentialism as a kind of ethical theory, and how it relates to AMAs.2 Consequentialism as a class of ethical theory can be said to be typified by two theses.3 • Value is independent of the right – It is possible to give an account of the value of states of affairs and thus a comparative ranking of alternative states of affairs without appeal to the concept of 2. In the interest of brevity, the moral agency of AGI was assumed. Sullins' criteria of autonomy, intentionality and responsibility are here assumed on the part of AGI. See Sullins (2011). 3. Timmons 2013, 112. 2 right action. The states of affairs relevant in a consequentialist theory of right action are consequences (or outcomes) related in some way to the action. • Explanatory priority of value – A full and proper explanation of what makes an action right (or wrong) can be given (solely) in terms of the value of the consequences that are related in some way to the action. Reduced to a single proposition, Consequentialist ethical theories would see that an act is right if and only if (and because) some action A possesses the best consequences of all available alternatives (B, C, D...) within the agent's power from an impartial standpoint.4 Consequentialism is thus a kind of ethical theory that is teleological, maximising, and impartial. That is, theories of the kind assess the deontic status of agent action based on their consequences (teleological), the action with the best consequences is the obligatory action an agent must take to behave ethically (maximising), and the agent is to regard the consequences of their actions impartially. Although speaking to the exact nature of any future AGI would be speculative at best, I believe it uncontroversial to assert that it would have to be in some manner similarly teleological, maximising, and impartial–just as Consequentialist ethical theories are. Extrapolating from contemporary narrow artificial intelligence (which is necessarily teleological at least, as are all machines that have a function), it is intuitive to see the other two characteristics as at least plausible potential characteristics of any future AGI. Perhaps the most salient relation Consequentialist-type ethical theories have in regards to AMAs is the inherently algorithmic nature of Consequentialism. For example, Anderson et. al. have demonstrated how Hedonistic Act Utilitarianism can be implemented to compute 4. Although the many competing tokens of Consequentialism (Act Utilitarian, Rule Utilitarian, Satisficing Consequentialist, to name a few) all have differing notions of what will ultimately count as "best consequences," Consequentialism as a kind of ethical theory is now sufficiently outlined for the purposes of this paper. 3 right action based on best consequences in a way that is consistent, complete and practical.5 The computation of utility by a machine intelligence is more reliable than human moral arithmetic could ever be, as would its impartiality–both critical features of Consequentialism generally. 3 An Autonomous Vehicle 'Trolley-Problem' To demonstrate the potential output of a Consequentialist foundation, consider the following scenario. There exist two vehicles travelling on a crowded motorway at high speed (A and B). Both vehicles are autonomously driven, they are aware of how many occupants they have, and are networked (can communicate with one another). Vehicle A in the right lane has five occupants, while vehicle B in the left lane has but one. The highway is populated with other non-autonomous vehicles such that both autonomous vehicles have many other vehicles in front of and behind them travelling at relative speed. Suddenly, a non-autonomous vehicle (C ) careens onto the crowded highway, ensuring a 5. Anderson, Anderson, and Armen 2005, 2. 4 high-speed collision will ensue between it and vehicle A at minimum. Indeed, the relative speeds of the vehicles in question are such that only a machine intelligence would be able to process information fast enough to make a decision of any consequence in what will soon become an ethical dilemma. In the seconds that vehicle A has before a fatal collision occurs, it begins moral deliberation to come to an ethically obligatory decision. Vehicle A can rapidly accelerate or decelerate to escape collision with C, though this would endanger an unknown number of other lives in other vehicles, potentially starting a chain of further collisions. Label this decision S1. It can take no evasive action, but this would assure a side-collision with C and would similarly endanger an unknown number of lives in the other vehicles behind A. Label this decision S0. The critical injury of at least five individuals seems to be assured in either case, if not for a third option. Recall that vehicle A and B are both fundamentally Consequentialist, and they are networked. If B were to run itself and its single occupant off of the road, then this would make room for A to swerve into the now-vacated left-most lane. A's collision with C would be avoided, and its five occupants spared harm. The single occupant of B would be sacrificed to not only save the five, but also avoid a multiple collision. Seeing as this joint decision between A and B results in the best state of affairs within their power, this course of action is morally obligatory and is therefore enacted by the two vehicles. Label this decision S2. Decision Label Agents Affected Agents Harmed S0 >5 >5 S1 >5 >5 S2 ≥ 6 ≥ 1 The AMA is, at minimum, concerned with the impact its decision has on all agents and those agents that will come to foreseeable harm. The lower the integer of either category, the better. This is an oversimplification, of course, since probability theory would inform all decision-making, and there would be other variables to consider, but the crucial point here is that there is always an unambiguous right action under Consequentialism which ought to 5 be effectuated that is computationally derivable.6 Again, the scenario here discussed is simplistic, but it is revealing. Consider the possibility that instead of vehicle A and B possessing the same Consequentialist ethic, Vehicle B as a rule always protected its occupants from harm, since–from a marketing perspective, say– partiality was more appealing to the consumer than a commitment to impartiality. The greater number would not be spared harm, since B would hold as a maxim to protect its occupant in all situations. Vehicle B would remain in place, forcing A to choose either S0 or S1. State of affairs are optimised if and only if (and because) all AMAs share a commitment to an impartial Consequentialism. 4 Challenges and Alternatives to Consequentialism I am asserting that Consequentialist-type ethical theories are the most plausible to serve as a basis for a machine ethic. This is to say that, at minimum, for a machine to be ethical will entail a commitment to some token normative theory informed by Consequentialism in kind. Does this, however, leave open the possibility that certain features of other ethical theories (Deontological, Rossian Moral Pluralistic, Aretaic, to name a few) may find an important place in some 'complete' machine ethic on top of a Consequentialist foundation? Perhaps an AGI–just like a human intelligence–should look beyond the monism of Consequentialism in less morally fraught scenarios and lean on other articulated ethical frameworks to guide its behaviour? Perhaps the maximising and impartial nature of Consequentialism should only apply in scenarios of crisis, but Kantian maxims ought to guide AMA action otherwise, for example. While I cannot definitively affirm or deny the validity, let alone the soundness, of such a suggestion, I do think that it introduces an additional layer of complexity in an already complex project. For instance, it seems to me that this thinking entails a theoretic com6. If S2 were unavailable, then the AMA would either choose S0 or S1 depending on which would probabilistically endanger the least amount of agents. Even if the difference in probability is marginal, there will always be an unambiguous action for the AMA to effectuate. 6 mitment to a kind of Moral Particularism, which is itself controversial and may undermine the consistency we are striving for in the development of a foundational machine ethic. I believe that a foundational machine ethic would be at least computationally intelligible and consistent (read: predictable), and this latter feature seems to entail a Moral Generalism concerning any plausible machine ethic. So, if there is to be a plausible foundational machine ethic, it will strictly be an ethic–Consequentialist, Deontological, Aretaic, to name a few, and not interplay between some or all of ethics. Thus, I now examine an alternative foundational ethic. Consider the classic rival to Consequentialism: Deontology. Powers argues that the first formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative can be used to generate rules of right action which would inherently be computationally intelligible due to their purely formal (logical) nature. Instead of relying on an arithmetic approach and the empirical demands entailed by a commitment to "good consequences," a Deontological approach would entail testing against systematicity and universalisability for every circumstance, purpose and action an AMA might encounter according to a formalised deontic logic.7 I think that this Deontological approach is very promising. It is computationally intelligible and theoretically consistent, satisfying what I have argued are two minimal conditions for a plausible foundational machine ethic. However, and summarising substantially, this Kantian approach which relies on nonmonotonic logic fails to account for supererogation, cannot account for semidecidability of set membership (an important feature of first-order logic), and is typified by excessive specificity (not conducive to generalisability). Most detrimentally, though, it has no mechanism for prioritising one maxim (prescribed course of action) over another when two or more conflict.8 While most of the challenges faced by this Deontological approach do not disqualify it outright, I believe that its failure to account for moral conflict–a situation where two equally weighty moral precepts apply–does. An ethical theory is supposed to be, among other things, 7. Powers 2006, 46-47. 8. ibid., 49-51. 7 action guiding. When a theory fails to prescribe an action, it fails in this vital sense, and is thus demonstrably lacking in an important regard. The problem of moral conflict is, of course, a general issue in normative ethics for all normative theories which are not monistic, but its consequences for AMA behaviour are particularly concerning. What is an AMA to do when its action guiding foundation offers it no prescription? In narrow implementations, does the AMA throw an exception and simply cease operation? Perhaps, since that might be warranted in supervised domains where a human intelligence can be called upon, but this (in)action seems to fail in unsupervised domains where the performance of right action is arguably even more crucial. Or, does the AMA simply continue towards its goal as if no moral dilemma was encountered at all? Indeed, how a simple software program (let alone a narrow machine intelligence) treats an encountered error is itself as much of an ethical concern as it is a technical one when people and machines interact. When it comes to a general machine intelligence–a level of artificial intelligence where a lack of direct human supervision is entailed–perhaps a novel bottom-up solution will be generated if and when a scenario that entails moral conflict arises. After all, AGI is an intelligence indistinguishable from our own, and human beings do not throw errors when confronted with a moral challenge. Yet, as the designers of AGI, I think it uncontroversial to suggest that while it may be fascinating to see what a given intelligence might decide to do when its literal moral code fails to offer a decisive action, such novelty is by definition unpredictable, and therefore the AMA fails to be consistent. Ultimately, though, an AGI is a hypothetical entity, so I can only speculate. The most I will suggest here is that the designers of AGI ought not set up its AMA to fail by giving it what might be described as an incomplete ethic: one which cannot account for moral conflict. Why have as a design feature uncertainty, and in such a crucial domain as ethical behaviour? The good AMA is one which, when confronted with a moral dilemma, adheres to an ethical theory which has it return a morally obligatory action every time. What is required is the encoding of an ethic that, if it cannot avoid moral conflict, can at 8 least resolve it predictably. Even in conceivably narrow implementations of AI–such as the autonomous vehicle example above–stopping and calling for help, or ignoring the dilemma entirely, would result in the harm of many. Since moral conflict avoidance is so demonstrably important, and the monism of Consequentialism ensures that such cannot arise in the first place, this further indicates that a Consequentialist theory would be a sound foundation for a machine ethic. Of course, the Consequentialist approach is not without its own theoretical problems. One of the more powerful objections is the suggestion that the set of empirical data required by Consequentialism to come to a moral verdict would be prohibitively large. So large, in fact, that it would require the AMA to be virtually omniscient.9 I believe this is overselling the size of the set of what is morally relevant–that which would be required for a moral decision. Bearing in mind that when we are designing an AMA, the goal first and foremost is to have an agent who is ethically greater than or equal to a human moral agent. Humans are far from ideal moral agents, yet they can be perfectly consistent welfare-Consequentialists even though they are further from omniscience than a machine. Like humans, AMAs would be capable of adopting heuristics to come to decisions. "One kind of ethical heuristic might be to follow rules that are expected to increase local utility. For instance, rather than analyse all the consequences of her possible actions, a person may choose between them solely on the basis of benefits to her local community."10 Applied to AMAs, this line of reasoning would see the features of its immediate environment privileged over historical or anticipated environmental states, with distant consequences in future times heavily discounted, for example. Beyond this, though, any further objections would require treatment by whichever token Consequentialist moral theory is ultimately chosen. 9. Wallach 2009b, 88. 10. ibid., 90. 9 5 Bottom-Up Approaches In what other ways can an AGI be made to think ethically? Thus far, we have considered two major top-down approaches to encoding morality, but we will now briefly consider what I believe to be the two most promising bottom-up approaches I am aware of. Even though we lack full knowledge of how human agents come to develop a moral character as they mature, this need not disqualify its inquiry nor its potential applications in machine ethics. One bottom-up approach simulates evolutionary pressure on artificial entities in the hopes that each successive generation of entities evolve and refine complex behaviours from initially simple ones. 20th century developments in sociobiology and mathematics revealed that, under certain environmental conditions (such as those informed by iterated game-theoretic situations like the Prisoner's Dilemma), cooperative behaviour could be conducive to successful genetic propagation intraspecially and could therefore emerge evolutionarily.11 The upshot is that complex ethical behaviour might be capable of emerging evolutionarily given the proper evolutionary pressures. In this way, AMAs would develop morality through iterative interactions with other AMAs without the need of some top-down encoding of a moral theory. The suggestion is that the intelligence required to successfully participate in iterated game-theoretic environments is all that is required for the emergence of morality. So, what would begin as a simple choice to cooperate or not would, over time, lead to complex ethical reasoning. However, it is wholly unclear if mere evolutionary pressures in a simulated environment are enough to result in ethical agents, let alone ethical agents that are guided consistently enough for their behaviour to be foundational.12 Another bottom-up approach recognises that human morality is–at least to some degree– learned, and if it can be learned, then it can be taught. Much like how a child learns to read, perhaps an AGI might learn to be an AMA through varieties of reinforcement learning and case training. Marcello Guarini, for example, outlined his attempt to use 11. Wallach 2009a, 101-102. 12. ibid., 103. 10 different neural network configurations to classify moral propositions as either permissible or impermissible.13 While learning approaches are theoretically promising, and have solid applications in other domains, they have yet to result in anything resembling a foundational ethical theory. Perhaps all that is required is more data, and more time. Common to both of these bottom-up strategies, though, are their difficulty and uncertainty. More work needs to be done before any bottom-up approach can be counted on to supply a consistent and plausible basis for a machine ethic. 6 Conclusion Recall the two fundamental theses which underly Consequentialism. Value-independence and the explanatory priority of value. The former allows an AMA to offer a value judgement on the state of its environment without appeal to the concept of right action. What is of concern are probabilistic outcomes of actions. The latter ensures the AMA knows when it has behaved ethically since what makes an action right is given solely in terms of the value of the consequences that are related to the action. Thus, a Consequentialist AMA would see that an act is right if and only if (and because) that act would result in the best state of affairs of all available alternatives within its power, impartially. The two theses of Consequentialism are computationally intelligible and offer theoretically consistent moral verdicts. Moreover, the monism of Consequentialism escapes the thorny issue of moral conflict. I believe that top-down approaches are still the most promising towards the development of an AMA, though bottom-up approaches may nevertheless play a role. Of the set of normative theories, I submit that Consequentialist-type theories are the most plausible to serve as a basis for a machine ethic precisely because they can be counted on to come to a moral conflict-free verdict based on computationally intelligible principles of welfare-maximisation in a consistent manner. 13. Guarini 2011, 321-328. 11 References Allen, Colin, Gary Varner, and Jason Zinser. 2000. "Prolegomena to any Future Artificial Moral Agent." Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 12, no. 3 (July): 251–261. doi:10.1080/09528130050111428. http://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/abs/10.1080/09528130050111428. Anderson, Michael, and Susan Leigh Anderson. 2018. "GenEth: a General Ethical Dilemma Analyzer." Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics 9, no. 1 (November): 337–357. issn: 2081-4836. doi:10.1515/pjbr-2018-0024. http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ pjbr.2018.9.issue-1/pjbr-2018-0024/pjbr-2018-0024.xml. 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