Veganism and the "Problem" of Predation

Re: wild animals (0.00 / 0)

Thanks for the thoughtful question. Indeed this is an important issue and one that has actually come up before.

Back in 1973, just after he had published an essay on "Animal Liberation" in the New York Review of Books, Peter Singer was asked whether humans should interfere in nature to stop animals from eating each other. He replied:

As for wild animals, for practical purposes I am fairly sure, judging from man's past record of attempts to mold nature to his own aims, that we would be more likely to increase the net amount of animal suffering if we interfered with wildlife, than to decrease it. Lions play a role in the ecology of their habitat, and we cannot be sure what the long-term consequences would be if we were to prevent them from killing gazelles. [...]

The remaining question is purely hypothetical, and perhaps it would be politic to refuse to answer it. Nevertheless, philosophers are supposed to answer hypothetical questions, so I will risk it. If, in some way, we could be reasonably certain that interfering with wildlife in a particular way would, in the long run, greatly reduce the amount of killing and suffering in the animal world, it would, I think, be right to interfere.

I agree with the second paragraph, but the first seems like something of a cop-out stance (though perhaps an expedient choice in the situation -- when you're trying just to persuade people of vegetarianism, suggesting an obligation to intervene in nature might only serve to allow them to dismiss your position as absurd). Tyler Cowen, in section III.1 of "Policing Nature," gives some good examples of where Singer's defense about the danger of disrupting ecology probably wouldn't hold up.

But more fundamental is the point you raise: What if the lion-gazelle ecology that we're preserving by not interfering is itself a source of net suffering? This piece suggests that may indeed be the case. It concludes, "As serious as animal pain due to experiments and agriculture may be, the number of wild animals that suffer in preventable ways is probably far higher. It seems that there ought to be a cost-effective way of relieving at least some of this suffering" (p. 27).  Another page on the site makes the same point (see the section "Finite Suffering--Animals").

David Pearce has similarly raised concerns about wild-animal suffering and has made suggestions in another Felicifia post regarding re-engineering nature.

Of course, as you hint, some might take this as a reductio against utilitarian concern for animals (and in fact, I think this is not uncommon among people who try to defend eating meat by suggesting where that line of thinking might lead). However, I personally don't find it counterintuitive to maintain that people might have an obligation to prevent massive amounts of needless suffering in nature, especially in cases where it would cost little to do so.

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by: Alan Dawrst @ Sun Jun 01, 2008 at 20:45:32 PM CDT

The Problem of Predation (0.00 / 0)

If we saw a human toddler dying of thirst or hunger, or being eaten alive by a predator, we would be horrified.  A photographer who chose to video the unfolding tragedy without "interfering" would be guilty of culpable neglect. So too would the dying toddler's caregiver. By contrast, when a functionally equivalent non-human animal is dying of thirst or hunger, or is about to be eaten alive by a predator, we regard intervention as unethical -  or at least "sentimental". We are permitted to photograph our stricken fellow creatures, but we're not expected to "interfere" and rescue them. Non-intervention in the rest of the living world is enshrined in law in many of our existing wildlife parks.

Does our diametrically opposite response to equivalent scenarios across different species reflect a principled ethical distinction? Or is it arbitrary anthropocentric prejudice?  [Perhaps it's worth recalling that many 20th century Social Darwinists believed that we shouldn't "interfere" to help "unfit" human beings i.e. it was "unnatural" to protect the weak, the sick, and the vulnerable.]

IMO exactly the same degree of horror - and active intervention  - is appropriate when a functionally equivalent non-human animal is about to suffer the same fate as the human toddler in the example above. Utilitarians believe that compassion should be systematized.  So we should attempt comprehensively to prevent such horrors as soon as we have the technical means to do so - just as we are now trying systematically to reduce (human) infant disease and mortality across the world.  Of course any such prospect for non-humans strikes most people today as utterly fanciful. However, we are living in what is (probably) the last century of "wildlife" in the traditional sense. Habitat destruction and human population growth means that the larger terrestrial vertebrates, at least, aren't likely to survive much longer outside our managed nature reserves. Ecosystem redesign, depot contraception and genetic modification are likely to become the norm. Admittedly, a "welfare state" for non-human animals is currently politically unrealistic even if it's technically feasible. I'm sure most people, pre-reflectively, would like to perpetuate the sociopathic killing machines we know as lions - the romanticised  "king of the beasts" - even if lions become extinct in the wild. Yet when we witness the cruelty of what of truly lion-like behaviour entails, we typically recoil - in the same way that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, most of us would be vegetarians. For example, one of the most watched videos on Youtube last year was filmed in the Kruger National Park: a conflict between wildebeest vs lions vs crocodiles. A terrified young wildebeest near a river is attacked by lions, which begin to asphyxiate it.  The wildebeest is snatched from the lions by crocodiles.  Finally the traumatized youngster is rescued by members of the returning wildebeest herd.

I've no doubt many viewers regard this spectacle as "entertaining" (cf the Roman colosseum). But most of us also feel pity for the victim - and joy when the young wildebeest escapes. OK, that's just one example. But when events in our future wildlife parks have the same visual immediacy as this scene, I reckon "natural"  traumas and tragedies will (eventually) come to seem as morally unacceptable as would, say, allowing lions to feed on live wildebeest in zoos today. With power comes complicity; and absolute power brings absolute complicity. Hence my tentative prediction that the world's master species is (ultimately) going to get rid of suffering altogether.  

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by: davidpearce @ Wed Jun 04, 2008 at 06:24:24 AM CDT

Two forms of utilitarianism (0.00 / 0)

I am in full agreement with the two excellent comments above.  I shall merely add that the problem of deciding when a life is not worth living arises only on some forms of utilitarianism.  On what we may call person affecting variants of this view, good and bad experiences do not directly make outcomes better or worse, but rather make sentient beings better or worse off.  It is the welfare of these beings that constitutes the goodness of outcomes.  By contrast, impersonalist utilitarianism does not assign intrinsic significance to individual lives; it instead holds that good and bad experiences are themselves what make outcomes better or worse.  On this variant, the relation that holds between good and bad experiences and the beings whose experiences they are parallels the relation that holds between individual people and the larger collectives to which these people belong.  Such collections of individuals matter simply because their individual members do.  Similarly, happy or miserable lives are morally significant only for the happiness and misery they contain.  Since this is the form of utilitarianism I believe we should favour, we don't need to concern ourselves with the question 'When does a life become worth living?'  Our focus should be confined to the experiences of happiness and suffering themselves.  It is only the fact that these experiences feel intrinsically good or bad, rather than they feel this way to someone, that makes certain outcomes intrinsically morally better than others.

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by: Benthamite @ Wed Jun 04, 2008 at 18:07:45 PM CDT

arguably more? (0.00 / 0)

Alan, I don't see any support in the essays you linked to for the notion that animals in the wild suffer more than animals raised for food - the author makes no attempt to quantify the suffering of livestock, which is a relatively known quantity when compared to the suffering of wild animals. Furthermore, utilitarianism dictates that we not only attempt to reduce suffering but also to reduce it in the most practicable and cost-effective manner. Surely it's simpler to work on the suffering of food animals, whose conditions of living we entirely control. Lastly, because food animals are bred and raised specifically so that they can be tortured and killed means that the suffering is extra-needless.

 

So yeah basically I feel that the (arguably more) bit is baseless.

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by: moth @ Sun Nov 02, 2008 at 16:50:17 PM CST

false dichotomy (0.00 / 0)

The dichomy is false and ignores the fact that human activity is a huge cause of suffering in the "wild" world.

The post's original argument also ignores positive and negative externalities - that is, the meat industry has lots of negative externalities which aren't associated with the natural cycle of life and death. Conversely, functioning (and suffering) ecosystems have benefits which are enjoyed by many organisms within them, even those who aren't "winning."

It's obvious to me that eliminating all suffering (without killing everything on the planet) is absurd. While it would be nice to be able to ensure that every single insect led a full and happy life, interfering with natural processes to such a degree would have catastrophic effects for the rest of life. That's why suffering-reduction as an ethos is incomplete. 

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by: moth @ Sun Nov 02, 2008 at 17:03:50 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Re: factory farms vs. nature (0.00 / 0)

I'm curious: What are those benefits? Happy moments during life, even if the net sum is possibly negative?

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by: Alan Dawrst @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 10:12:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

New pieces on the subject (0.00 / 0)

I've written a piece highlighting the importance of the issue of wild-animal suffering and suggesting the creation of an organization that publicizes the concern among activists, academics, and the general public. David Pearce has written a manifesto outlining technical considerations in the abolition of cruelty in nature. I am perhaps more skeptical than he that we'll be able to realize such advances any time soon, but I think the article is a great way to start the conversation that needs to take place on this subject.

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by: Alan Dawrst @ Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 18:03:33 PM CDT