I suppose this is the best way out of this conundrum. If private individuals in society value the lives of animals, they are free to buy up swaths of land and set up nature preserves, offering these animals protection against outside human interference. In urban settings, people can set up communities with contracts expressly forbidding animal abuse, etc.
That rights of any sort can only be protected through financial purchase seems a fairly straightforward establishment of slavery. There’s also a basic conflict with utilitarian ethics, in that the preservation of property “rights” and the abuse of animals that might entail is a more severe imposition that causes greater suffering than the violation of those “rights” to defend animal welfare would be.
Walter Block would be fine with the scenario mentioned, though it strikes me as unjust and a tad authoritarian. How would David Friedman justify it?
You wouldn’t be according the animals you purchase rights. You would simply be defending your property (the animals).
Yes, and while ownership of animals is ethically justifiable in a more general sense, absolute ownership so that any sort of abuse or molestation of them is permissible is not. As mentioned, the imposition of others interfering with your “rights” to protect the animals’ welfare is a less severe imposition than non-interference and a free reign of animal abuse would be, since it causes less suffering.
So is it “more justifiable” to such an extent that it is actually justified. Or is it still in fact unjustified, just less so? Come clean on this for us.
It’s more difficult to say than immediately apparent. After all, couldn’t the hunter, if a member of “primitive” society, migrate into “civilized” society and abandon his hunting habits, which may be rendered unnecessary? Or what if the hunter is merely an indigent member of “mainstream” society? Is it still absolutely necessary to hunt?
It is only speciesism and double standard it we were to claim that only those individual animals which have capacity to reason have rights. Instead I would say that if of a certain specie only a single individual animal would demonstrate the ability to reason that then we would concede that this specie is not an animal specie and that therefore all the members of this specie have certain rights not just this single creature.
And what if hunting is absolutely necessary for survival? Would it make it fully justified?
Is killing a fellow human in order to eat him when absolutely necessary for ones survival make it justified to kill him? I do not think so.
Necessity as per survival has no implications on justice of an act. It may make us judge the act differently in some other terms but not in terms of justice.
Yes, and practiced even if it was not ethically justified, for that matter.
Possibly. Killing and consumption of human infants in particular is only superficially distinctive from the killing and consumption of various nonhuman animals with similar awareness levels.
Yes, it does. It changes a behavior from the pursuit of commodity that eating foie gras prepared by others for luxury represents to the pursuit of necessity that personally killing and eating an animal in order to survive represents. In the former scenario, the suffering endured by a duck/goose in the procedure entailed for foie gras preparation is probably of a more intense nature than the happiness gained by the person who eats it, whereas in the latter scenario, the suffering endured by a killed animal is of lesser intensity than that of a person who would otherwise starve to death.
Aha, so while you started with the talk that it is only moral to concede to animals certain privileges we have now established that you do not ultimately care an iota for either animals or human infants.
Which would mean that if suffering of a pathological rapist who has not raped anyone in a long time is greater than the suffering his victim would endure during the rape, then his raping of her is a moral act.
Not really. My interest is in the prevention of suffering, and the assignment of appropriate rights as the means to that end. The painless death of an animal causes substantially less suffering than its confinement, maltreatment, and eventual violent slaughter on a factory farm. The painless death of an infant may not cause intrinsic harm, but causes extrinsic suffering in that its existence is valued by parents and other family members, and even if not, its existence would be valued by many potentially adoptive parents. But many domestic pets with similar sentience levels are also valued by their owners, though we’ll have to conclude that it’s typically to a lesser extent.
I’m afraid I cannot imagine how that could be conceivable, and it seems to be in sharp conflict with happiness maximization as determined by Jeremy Bentham’s felicific calculus, at the core of utilitarian ethical analysis, since the suffering endured by the rape victim would seem to be of greater intensity, duration, etc., than the happiness gained by the rapist. Since this man is a pathological rapist, after all, it seems that individual rapes do not provide him with a very significant level of happiness, whereas individual rape victims suffer substantial trauma. Even if there was somehow a way for an individual rape to be morally justified (and as I said, I cannot conceive of how that would be possible in any reasonable circumstances), there would still be a justification for the prohibition of rape on account of its general immorality even if this did not extend to each individual case.
Even if an act is moral it is still immoral. Even if it is justified it is still justified to prohibit it.
Moral acrobatics worthy of a circus artisan.
Just a misunderstanding of the difference between acts and rules on your part, actually. The utilitarian bioethicist Peter Singer summarizes it:
The constrictions of bounded rationality prevent long and thorough analysis of the moral implications and potential consequences and individual acts, and any Misesian should realize why any collective legal system, an entity of public managerial organization, cannot calculate those potential implications and consequences on an individual level. 
As a hardcore vegan, I must say that I am enjoying this conversation. Carry on.
The question is similar to the other topic concerning the consumption of ‘severely retarded’ or ‘intellectually disabled’ humans.
Are animals potentially human?
How do you tell?
Who is to judge?
I remember when the first ‘Planet of the Apes’ came out.
I’ve always presumed it to be fiction…but respect those who may regard it as prophecy.
…just not to the point of subjugating my carnivorous…ness. [:$]
Leviathan, I don’t believe that utilitarianism is a very good moral doctrine to abide by. I can justify murder, rape, and torture using either rule or act utilitarianism. In most cases, I don’t think you can prove that X suffers more than Y gains, or vice versa. Also, how would you address Nozicks Utility monster?
Really? I’ve heard that sentiment expressed many times by anti-utilitarians, but have never heard any examples of this expressed, and certainly nothing indicating that utilitarian rules would be unsound even if specific acts that utilitarianism mandates conflict with our ethical intuitions (such as forcibly harvesting a person’s organ and giving it to another since they’ll each have one healthy organ). I suppose I can see how utilitarianism might justify murder if assassination of a dictatorial head of state (if you call that murder), would prevent many more murders or torture in a ticking time bomb scenario, though I can’t think of many conceivable utilitarian justifications for rape.
Actually, I think it would be plainly apparent in most cases, especially if we have an understanding of felicific calculus.
By first noting that there’s a point at which “quality” can no longer defeat “quantity,” i.e. the existence of an intensely happy person is not ethically justifiable if it necessitates the sacrifice of many moderately happy people. And beyond that, it can be dismissed it as a theoretical abstraction with no practical value, as with the mere addition paradox. Since practical circumstances are of considerably greater moral weight than theoretical ones that will never occur, they’re of significantly greater interest to me.
If overall happiness would be increased if we rape a person, then this is deemed moral according to utilitarianism. If there is a community of racists, and the pleasure they receive from raping a black person exceeds the suffering this person must bear, then the rape is not unethical. In fact, it may be the moral thing to do. I know that conditions change when it comes to rule utilitarianism, but evil acts may still be justified. Also, what about McCloskey’s Informant? Is it morally permissible to falsely accuse and convict an innocent man if doing so will stop riots and lynchings and therefore maximize happiness?
I don’t think felicific calculus is a very useful tool, especially when your comparing two or more people.
The goal is to maximize overall happiness. The utilitarians who arbitrarily pick a point at “quality” can no longer defeat “quantity” are practically abandoning utilitarianism. Can you tell me when exactly quality can no longer defeat quantity? Apparently it is not when happiness is no longer maximized.
Finally, you are a utilitarian in the context of subjective relativism, correct? I am assuming that you do not believe in objective ethics.
How will it exceed the suffering, as the intensity, duration, etc. of the suffering endured by the victim would be of a far greater nature than the intensity, duration, etc. of the happiness acquired by the aggressors?
When I first heard of the argument in ethics class, I didn’t understand it and frankly still don’t. How will false convictions prevent more murders from being committed, since the actual murderers are still at large? This is another example of an objection with no practical value, and one that effectively consists of purposeless navel gazing, particularly since its focus is on an individual act and cannot stand as a criticism to general utilitarian rules, as properly understood as two levels, act and rule utilitarianism are not in conflict.
That’s a cautious conclusion. Where are our arguments?
Actually, the goal was to maximize the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people, as formulated by Bentham. It was Mill that recognized that the greatest amount of happiness and the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people might conflict, but this wasn’t an utter abandonment of Bentham’s principles. More importantly, there’s an effective law of diminishing returns of sorts when it comes to the happiness of one person; due to the limited nature of individual perceptions, extremely intense happiness on the part of one person isn’t worth sacrificing the moderate happiness of many.
But the more important point, and the one that you did not address, is that there is no utility monster. There is no practical purpose in focus on things that have no application outside of the textbook, and it’s interesting that even that may be in conflict with utilitarian principles in that it delays the adoption of a utilitarian ethical framework and the benefits that it could provide without offering anything of comparable moral significance, since purely theoretical objections are weak.
Are you referring to ethics or morality? We hold to certain fundamental moral precepts regarding the maximization of happiness and minimization of suffering that will remain universal, but recognize that the particular elements of certain situations will require different actions in different circumstances, if that’s what you were attempting to convey.
How will it exceed the suffering, as the intensity, duration, etc. of the suffering endured by the victim would be of a far greater nature than the intensity, duration, etc. of the happiness acquired by the aggressors?
When I first heard of the argument in ethics class, I didn’t understand it and frankly still don’t. How will false convictions prevent more murders from being committed, since the actual murderers are still at large? This is another example of an objection with no practical value, and one that effectively consists of purposeless navel gazing, particularly since its focus is on an individual act and cannot stand as a criticism to general utilitarian rules, as properly understood as two levels, act and rule utilitarianism are not in conflict.
That’s a cautious conclusion. Where are our arguments?
Actually, the goal was to maximize the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people, as formulated by Bentham. It was Mill that recognized that the greatest amount of happiness and the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people might conflict, but this wasn’t an utter abandonment of Bentham’s principles. More importantly, there’s an effective law of diminishing returns of sorts when it comes to the happiness of one person; due to the limited nature of individual perceptions, extremely intense happiness on the part of one person isn’t worth sacrificing the moderate happiness of many.
But the more important point, and the one that you did not address, is that there is no utility monster. There is no practical purpose in focus on things that have no application outside of the textbook, and it’s interesting that even that may be in conflict with utilitarian principles in that it delays the adoption of a utilitarian ethical framework and the benefits that it could provide without offering anything of comparable moral significance, since purely theoretical objections are weak.
Are you referring to ethics or morality? We hold to certain fundamental moral precepts regarding the maximization of happiness and minimization of suffering that will remain universal, but recognize that the particular elements of certain situations will require different actions in different circumstances, if that’s what you were attempting to convey.