Hi All,
I have a new article out in the Journal of Animal Ethics on "The Repugnant Conclusion of Effective Animal Altruism". Abstract below! I am curious how this will land with the audience here, and I welcome your thoughts.
Abstract
Effective animal advocates want to help animals as effectively as possible. I explore a popular way of spelling out this idea, according to which, when choosing between two actions to help animals, we should pick the one that maximizes the net aggregate welfare of animals. I argue that, if this is right, then—counterintuitively—we ought to build more confined animal feeding operations. This argument is an application of Parfit's mere addition paradox. My aim in laying out how this applies to animal ethics is to aid animal advocates wishing to examine the philosophical foundations of their advocacy.
Link to article: https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/jane/article/16/1/84/407918/The-Repugnant-Conclusion-of-Effective-Animal?guestAccessKey=9caf7280-2b9a-4b76-acec-89d30f1060fb
I think your reductio is standing on the big if that animals in CAFOs have a net positive existence, and the abstract / post skips that.
Thanks for your feedback, Clara! Not quite. My argument rests on the claim that it is possible for animals in CAFOs to have net positive welfare (not that they actually do). This creates an empirical and practical question for people wanting to maximize net aggregate welfare: figure out which exact living conditions ensure net positive welfare, and, based on that, which exact living conditions allow us to maximize net aggregate welfare. I have a long section in the paper were I discuss empirical research in that area, in particular the excellent work by Cynthia Schuck-Paim and her team at the Welfare Footprint Institute. As far as I can tell, with respect to layer hens, there is little evidence that lives in cage-free CAFOs would have net negative welfare.