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Utilitarianism is almost 300 years old and includes animals in its "circle of concern". Many people care about animal rights, and once people stop eating meat (
by yboris 5y ago
Utilitarianism is almost 300 years old and includes animals in its "circle of concern". Many people care about animal rights, and once people stop eating meat (because meat alternatives will eventually win out with price) there will be a major shift in perspective - meat eaters will be looked upon as we currently look on slave owners: doing something seriously morally wrong.
- DangitBobby 5y agoI know that individuals think this way, I'm just not convinced any society will ever get there.
- PeterisP 5y agoUtilitarianism is orthogonal to animal rights - it analyzes and describes behavior and action with respect to some utility function, but the utility function itself is essentially arbitrary and while utilitarianism can be used to model a balance between "human utility" and "animal utility", utilitarianism itself is just as suited for a "circle of concern" that explicitly includes only the utility of humans, or perhaps even just the utility of a specific subset of humans. The utility function is not up for grabs; it has to be axiomatically assumed and utilitarianism does not state whose utility matters and how much.
- yboris 5y agoIt would be quite a perversion of utilitarianism to say "utility is defined as the pleasure experienced by white people". Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, advocated for animal welfare because utility is about experiences of sentient beings (which animals are). It is true there are preference utilitarians and various other flavors, but I don't think cutting out animals outside of one's moral circle of concern can really be justified under utilitarianism.