Summary of the argument:
1. Many consequentialists advocate veganism because they think farming practices are overly harmful to animals.
2. Millions of humans live in poverty or in war zones and believe their lives to be worth living: if they didn’t believe this, they would commit suicide.
3. Conditions in free-range farms are no worse than conditions in places stricken by poverty and war. Conditions in factory farms might also be no worse.
4. So the lives of animals in some farms are worth living.
5. So the consequentialist ideal should actually be one of the following:
(i) Eat as much meat as possible to fund the lives as maximally many animals.
(ii) Remain vegan, but only because rearing animals is more expensive than growing crops. The money saved can be used for human welfare, or for animal welfare projects independent of meat production.
Read the extended argument
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Is democracy really paradoxical?
Richard Wolheim though that a paradoxical aspect of democracy was that the voting process forceda minority-voter into having inconsistent beliefs with respect to the policies he was voting for:
“Let us imagine a citizen who feeds his choice for, say, A, into the democratic machine. On the present interpretation, he is to be regarded as thereby expressing his opinion that A ought to be enacted. And now let us further suppose that the machine into which this and other choices have been fed comes up with its own choice, and its choice is for B. How can the citizen accept the machine’s choice, which involves his thinking that B ought to be enacted when, as we already know, he is of the declared opinion, that A ought to be enacted? […] For if a man expresses a choice for A and the machine expresses a choice for B, then the man, if he is to be a sound democratic, seems to be committed to the belief that A ought to be the case and to the belief that B ought to be the case. […] If this is so, then the difficulty that I have described would seem to constitute a paradox in the very heart of democracy.”
Tentative solutions to the paradox of democracy focus on semantic issues surrounding the use of the word 'ought.' For instance, the idea that because both 'oughts' are derived from different principles, they do not actually contradict each other. Such ideas are unsatisfactory, because, as in this case, they require us to abandon some common-sense beliefs about rationality, consistency, and moral deliberation. For a full list of such attempts, including Wollheim's, see: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com/Article/What-is-Wollheim-s-paradox--How-is-it-to-be-resolved-/5
A different approach to this paradox has been to question whether it really is a paradox. What is needed is an account of a voter's beliefs which is both (a) rational, (involving no contradictions) and (b) plausible. An account can be given which is rather a lot simpler than any solution so far, and that is to deny that there is an inconsistency in the voter's beliefs by denying that a voter believes that the policy he votes for ought necessarily to be enacted. As well as restoring consistency to the belief-set, there is a great deal of intuitive plausibility in the idea that a voter believes that. For if we has assumed that he is a democrat, and in that we mean that he accepts the majoritarian principle, he surely cannot rationally believe that 'the policy I vote for ought necessarily be enacted' for this belief is totalitarian, and contradicts the democratic principle.
In fact, when we go to the voting booth, we find ourselves in precisely this situation: we want the policy we vote for to be enacted (given that we think it is the best policy, and we want the best policy to be enacted) but we accept that it shouldn't necessarily be enacted, even if it is the best policy. Why we hold such a belief throws back to the problem of political obligation; i.e. there is a trade-off between accepting the enactment of a worse policy because to refuse to accept it (within moral limits) could threaten the basis of democracy, or, at least, would not be democratic behaviour. This reflects hte compromise one accepts when consenting to a collective decision-making process.
From this analysis, it seems clear that there is no paradox to deal with. A paradox is a set of obviously true axioms which lead to something apparently false, such as a contradiction. In Wollheim's case, the belief that democracy was paradoxical was driven my a false attribution of beliefs to the voter.
Although this theory needs some clarification/elaboration, I believe it puts this problem to rest for good. There is no semantical tinkering necessary, since the problem itself is a pseudo-problem.
“Let us imagine a citizen who feeds his choice for, say, A, into the democratic machine. On the present interpretation, he is to be regarded as thereby expressing his opinion that A ought to be enacted. And now let us further suppose that the machine into which this and other choices have been fed comes up with its own choice, and its choice is for B. How can the citizen accept the machine’s choice, which involves his thinking that B ought to be enacted when, as we already know, he is of the declared opinion, that A ought to be enacted? […] For if a man expresses a choice for A and the machine expresses a choice for B, then the man, if he is to be a sound democratic, seems to be committed to the belief that A ought to be the case and to the belief that B ought to be the case. […] If this is so, then the difficulty that I have described would seem to constitute a paradox in the very heart of democracy.”
Tentative solutions to the paradox of democracy focus on semantic issues surrounding the use of the word 'ought.' For instance, the idea that because both 'oughts' are derived from different principles, they do not actually contradict each other. Such ideas are unsatisfactory, because, as in this case, they require us to abandon some common-sense beliefs about rationality, consistency, and moral deliberation. For a full list of such attempts, including Wollheim's, see: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com/Article/What-is-Wollheim-s-paradox--How-is-it-to-be-resolved-/5
A different approach to this paradox has been to question whether it really is a paradox. What is needed is an account of a voter's beliefs which is both (a) rational, (involving no contradictions) and (b) plausible. An account can be given which is rather a lot simpler than any solution so far, and that is to deny that there is an inconsistency in the voter's beliefs by denying that a voter believes that the policy he votes for ought necessarily to be enacted. As well as restoring consistency to the belief-set, there is a great deal of intuitive plausibility in the idea that a voter believes that. For if we has assumed that he is a democrat, and in that we mean that he accepts the majoritarian principle, he surely cannot rationally believe that 'the policy I vote for ought necessarily be enacted' for this belief is totalitarian, and contradicts the democratic principle.
In fact, when we go to the voting booth, we find ourselves in precisely this situation: we want the policy we vote for to be enacted (given that we think it is the best policy, and we want the best policy to be enacted) but we accept that it shouldn't necessarily be enacted, even if it is the best policy. Why we hold such a belief throws back to the problem of political obligation; i.e. there is a trade-off between accepting the enactment of a worse policy because to refuse to accept it (within moral limits) could threaten the basis of democracy, or, at least, would not be democratic behaviour. This reflects hte compromise one accepts when consenting to a collective decision-making process.
From this analysis, it seems clear that there is no paradox to deal with. A paradox is a set of obviously true axioms which lead to something apparently false, such as a contradiction. In Wollheim's case, the belief that democracy was paradoxical was driven my a false attribution of beliefs to the voter.
Although this theory needs some clarification/elaboration, I believe it puts this problem to rest for good. There is no semantical tinkering necessary, since the problem itself is a pseudo-problem.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Disconcerting dream
I woke up this morning at 6.30am. With no intention of getting up so early, I dozed back to sleep. And as I approached the border between consciousness and sleep, I actively sought to have a dream. At was as if I was pushing myself into a fantasy world - a world that I could control, a world without worries, a world where peace could be found. My efforts resulted in a series of highly vivid visual images - far more vivid than any dream I'd had before. I can't remember the content of any of them, although one had a foreboding undertone. Each image did not last long, and afterwards , I returned to consciousness before willing in a new image.
The next thing that I remember is giving someone else this account of the preceding vivid dreams. But that cannot have happened, because I haven't seen the person for years. So this part must have been a dream.
Several things left me feeling disconcerted when I eventually woke up
i) having the initial, highly vivid dream
ii) having a dream immediately afterwards that posed as a waking reflection on the previous dream
iii) having a dream that followed on directly from what seemed to be a conscious experience of trying to start dreaming
The question is: was I awake when I had the experience of trying to start dreaming?
The next thing that I remember is giving someone else this account of the preceding vivid dreams. But that cannot have happened, because I haven't seen the person for years. So this part must have been a dream.
Several things left me feeling disconcerted when I eventually woke up
i) having the initial, highly vivid dream
ii) having a dream immediately afterwards that posed as a waking reflection on the previous dream
iii) having a dream that followed on directly from what seemed to be a conscious experience of trying to start dreaming
The question is: was I awake when I had the experience of trying to start dreaming?
Friday, December 15, 2006
Ranking infinite sets by size
Can you do it (unproblematically)?
(I am interested, because I am looking at suggestions about how to measure a person's freedom. Roughly, it is suggested that this be done by counting the actions that the person is free to do. But as far as I can see, everyone (even in nasty police states) has an infinite range of actions that they are free to do.
To illustrate: Jones is free to have a game of speed "air-chess" (like air guitair, but with chess) with himself for twenty minutes, then perform an action of his choosing (all of course, with his left pinkie at a precise level of contraction that is of his choosing: and to top it off, he can pick a few numbers at random between 0 and ... lets leave the upper bound).
The problem: we want to say that Jones with freedom of speech has more freedom than Jones without freedom of speech. But this involves saying that one infinite set (of free actions) is larger than another.
(I am interested, because I am looking at suggestions about how to measure a person's freedom. Roughly, it is suggested that this be done by counting the actions that the person is free to do. But as far as I can see, everyone (even in nasty police states) has an infinite range of actions that they are free to do.
To illustrate: Jones is free to have a game of speed "air-chess" (like air guitair, but with chess) with himself for twenty minutes, then perform an action of his choosing (all of course, with his left pinkie at a precise level of contraction that is of his choosing: and to top it off, he can pick a few numbers at random between 0 and ... lets leave the upper bound).
The problem: we want to say that Jones with freedom of speech has more freedom than Jones without freedom of speech. But this involves saying that one infinite set (of free actions) is larger than another.
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