 What did he just say that? Is this the same Alex? This is ridiculous. This is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe this Hello everyone, welcome to this video. So youtuber Alex O'Connor Cosmic Skeptic has recently uploaded a podcast with Peter Singer philosopher. He wrote the book Animal Liberation I'm pretty sure that book is what influenced cosmic skeptic to go vegan, but it's a very interesting discussion actually I was actually quite interested when I was watching it because I was like, oh what what angles Alex gonna go with because just a little bit of backstory Alex O'Connor was a practicing vegan quite recently put up a community post saying he's not vegan anymore He was quite ambiguous at the start He mentioned a few things that didn't make sense and then he came out with a video saying that he had some health issues that Prevented him from eating a plant-based diet and my opinion was he didn't do enough due diligence with his Health issues and I thought it was a bit of a cop-out and I assumed it was some of his philosophical views That kind of influenced his decision I was quite critical of him espousing some views that were quite utilitarian Utilitarian sort of maximizes the consequences of an action just looks at something in terms of the amount of well-being or suffering it produces and a Lot of utilitarians that I see they're mostly Suffering focus so like a negative utilitarian would be focused on reducing suffering and I see a lot of that and that kind Of leads you open to reductios where you kind of reduce a position down to absurdity Where like it gets to this point where like if you just kill someone and shoot them in the back of the head and don't cause them any suffering Then that's fine to do on a utilitarian view Peter singer is a utilitarian quite a famous utilitarian And I was so I was actually quite surprised But it came across that for the most part Alex was really challenging Peter singer on his utilitarian views when it comes to animal Ethics and there's a lot to discuss in this video actually so I thought should I discuss everything that I disagree with in this Video and I don't think that we have time so basically Alex quite rightly says do you think it's right that you? Called the father of the animal rights movement when you don't even have an animal rights position You're a utilitarian. I don't want to misquote anyone, but just watch it He also Alex also pushes him on free range eggs and Peter singer says it's fine to eat free range eggs He did talk about it in terms of a certain category, but then he also mentioned that free range hens are murdered After their egg production declines and also the male chicks are killed on a day of hatching So he knows about all that and there's also the problem with the egg laying There's problems with free range eggs But of course you wouldn't hear an animal rights activist say it's okay to eat free range eggs knowing all the issues and knowing They had the hens are murdered. I disagree with Peter singer I think he's got his reasons for believing what he believes and I think it's a lot of it stems from the fact that he's Utilitarian but I was actually quite surprised to see Alex pushed back on it and that part of this discussion I want to focus mostly on because there was a lot there and there's a lot to respond to this would be a three-hour video literally But it's where Alex starts pushing him on humane killing. So let's go You said you could imagine a world in which people mostly eat plant-based foods But occasionally treat themselves to the luxury of free range eggs or possibly even meet from animals who live good lives Under conditions natural for their species and are then humanely killed on the farm That's that's the quote that jumped out of me and I think the words they're humanely killed are seen by many if that killing is unnecessary As a contradiction in terms I'm liking it. I'm liking it. Let's see what how Peter singer responds. I cut a bit out of his response It's too long. He goes into free range eggs for seven minutes and you know, just let's just focus on his humane killing response I can't say with any confidence that it's wrong to bring animals into existence give them good lives And then kill them in a way that causes them no suffering and here lies the problem I actually haven't read animal liberation and to call Peter singer the father of the animal rights movement. I think it's completely wrong and I don't think we should do it if anything He's a he's a philosopher utilitarian animal ethics philosopher He does bioethics and things like this But he's definitely not the father of the animal rights movement if I were to pick a person to be the Father of the animal rights movement would be someone like Tom Reagan who wrote a book on animal rights because this is the kind of things that Peter singer Speaks about I mean, there's probably a bunch of points me and Peter singer agree on But something like this something as morally repugnant as not seeing an issue with breeding beings into existence To slaughter them And eat them He did say in his conversation want to be very clear that he wants to see the end of animal exploitation He just doesn't know how we're going to get there now, of course I want the abolition of animal exploitation full stop But how could you want to see the end of animal exploitation? Peter singer If you also have a view that you can't see that it's wrong to breed beings into existence Give them sentience and then rob that sentience from them in order to eat them I just that's where utilitarian leads you but alex actually does a really good job pushing him here. Let's go I don't know any philosopher who could really Argue without solving path. It's problems that that is unequivocally wrong But indeed the reason why it's a problem and I think You're raising something of a Of a non identity problem here. We've got this situation in which Bringing a being into existence In some sense requires this negative aspect in this case, it would be A premature death and you say something like well Maybe it would be better to not have that premature death But if it weren't for the fact that we were going to kill them, they wouldn't exist at all And they have an overall good life that's worth living Then if those are the options no life at all or a life that involves the premature death You know, what's the problem with with favoring the latter? And you say and as I say the reason I think this is a problem Is because if we look in a human context It seems that our intuitions are Screaming at us that to do this to a human being would be an ethical abomination I'm not sure if Alex has been listening to the criticisms of Humane slaughter utilitarianism or whether he already had this view and he was just Being sympathetic to this humane killing concept in his uh, what I would consider Harmful conversation he had with Michaela Peterson. Peterson popularized the marginal argument from marginal cases Which is like they're a marginal case human beings. They they might have a mental Disability sort of some sort. They might be incapacitated in some way Basically human intelligence exists on on on on this kind of bell curve. Would we justify killing human beings? Of this low say the mental capacity of a cow for for food or doing what we do to cast to these You know, uh human beings and it seems like Alex is using his argument from marginal cases Against him basically what he has to do Um to have the view that you can bring beings into existence, right and kill them without suffering He has to either contradict himself or be consistent and I'll let you find out which which path he chooses and Alex does a really good job here To raise human beings and perhaps you could keep them isolated so they don't know what's going on Maybe they're in some kind of cult that thinks that once you turn 18 years old You sort of go into a different realm or something but you take them through the door and you you slice their throats Maybe you put a bolt through their head first if you're feeling particularly humane I think people would would ridicule this view especially if it was promoted as a form of humanely killing them because Sure, it's humane in comparison to what we might do on a factory farm But perhaps compared to what the the moral worth of these beings Require to call it humane would be something of a travesty at least in a human context I would imagine you would think that that would be at least wrong and possibly grossly wrong Well, you might have imagined wrong So but what alex is trying to do is he's trying to he's creating a but basically the the very very important thing about Hypotheticals is it test the consistency of your moral view because there's no other way to test the consistency of your moral view Unless it's in reality you need these hypotheticals to sort of present your your ethical view your ethical framework And then produce a hypothetical that tests it and you can analogize and what alex is doing is he's trying to Create a situation that's analogous and put humans in place of the animals and seeing if uh peter singer will bite the bullet on that It's really refreshing actually to see alex challenging peter singer on these On these philosophical points about humane killing because yes Our intuitions are screaming that it would be a moral abomination to accept a world that would breed humans into existence Give them good lives Humanely kill them and then eat them that would just that would be like the the plot of some horror movie So I think in a human context, it's not possible to avoid spillover effects in terms of You know the acceptability of killing other humans Um, and I think that's really the the problem So peter sing has responded by saying the only problem with um doing that is that there would be a spillover effect So basically if we accept humans being killed in that context the ones that the the context that I accept for non-human animals Then there would be this spillover effect that We accept killing humans here. So we might we might start murdering each other That's the only thing That's what he thinks is wrong with it. I'm sorry to like just absolutely laugh But that is like but but peter singer accepts, right? This is the problem with with with peter singer, right? He applies the spillover effect argument here But he doesn't apply the spillover effect argument when he when he says eat free range eggs, uh, you can eat um If food is going to go to waste you can eat that meat Wouldn't there be a spillout effect into other areas of your life if you accept he he's saying that you can eat humanely raised meat um All these times where he's saying it's okay to eat meat His spillover effect is much more likely to happen in that scenario where people will be like well I eat meat in this context. I eat eggs in this context. I'm going to go get the cage The full-on factory farm caged eggs. I'm going to get the factory farm baking because I already see animal products as food That's the spillover effect happening now I mean that's something that I truly believe that if you allow animal products in certain situations You're going to allow them in every other situation and you're just going to be like I eat animal products That's how you identify yourself. I you know and people just don't draw clear lines So peter singer is contrary in my view contradicting himself with this spillover effect idea that the only reason It's wrong to breed it humans into existences and murder them Humanely is because of this spillover effect, but he doesn't apply that to eating animal products in certain contexts. So let's keep going as humans. We Want to go on living clearly and if you know If we discover that humans are being killed in this way that's going to Mean that we're going to fear that there'll be less respect for human life and that we will be killed. I think there's There are consequences because of our consciousness our awareness and Understanding of what's going on He's saying that the the the any problem with it is not the intrinsic problem with it of murdering someone Who wants to live who should have like the right to life? The problem is that people would get That found out about this would get fear and you know, that would that would be a Utilitarian problem because you kind of have other humans having fear of being killed in this way All alex has to do now Is just refine the hypothetical to be analogous and see if he still wants to Continue down that road. Let's go for animals that doesn't Generally apply I think so I think the As you say the intuitions that we have that's green to us that this is wrong if done for humans We we don't have those about animals and um I think there may be as I say reasons why we don't have those about animals You don't have those about animals. I have those intuitions about animals The crazy part is Peter singer popularized the term he didn't coin the term but popularized the term speciesism and it's quite ironic that He's got quite a speciesist position here. No, you could say well, that's just because we're speciesist and we use animals without thinking about their interest There you go Well, you know, there you go. Yeah, that's what I'm saying that you you're you're a speciesist in your position here but um in these conditions that we've been talking about I As I say, I think it's it's it's very hard to argue that it is contrary to their interests So murdering them is not contrary to their interests. It's very hard to argue that Well, if as a utilitarian if you believe that um, what matters is maximizing well-being reducing suffering Right, so these two only two metrics and you don't have rights in there Like someone has the rights not to be exploited and killed or killed humanely And basically his position is that they wouldn't have existed otherwise So you're basically giving them this this short-term happiness from a utilitarian view Wouldn't it be wrong to just drain the utility from the moral universe by murdering them? Because basically this is the utility that exists their well-being You come up and shoot them in the back of the head just to eat them That's just a small amount of pleasure, right? Just let's let's do the pleasure calculus Small amount of pleasure from eating the animals you could basically Flavours and tofu you would get like, you know after after you get used to the tofu, which is I love it now There would be like this marginal difference in pleasure But what you're talking about is robbing their pleasure to exist Which is a much deeper experience and taste pleasure and draining that well-being from the moral universe So even from a utilitarian not even a rights standpoint, what you're doing is you're trading off Their continued existence right from that point onwards because they kill them at a young age Their continued existence Their depth of their depth of experience and if you're saying they're having these good lives you're robbing them of continuing that good life For a tiny bit of taste pleasure. I don't see how he's done his utility calculus here But to me that sounds like Even from a utilitarian standpoint an unethical thing to do maybe I wouldn't simply say well, we wouldn't do this to humans So therefore it must be wrong to do it to animals. Why wouldn't you say that? That sounds like a species is the position At least if you I can understand if a human has Let's just if you care about sentience and a human being has a greater level of sentience To a depth of experience To another animal, right? Let's just say it's a a fish or a chicken. Then I can understand if you have A choice between that All things remaining equal. Let's just say it's a Neutral human being they're not an evil person or anything and a neutral say fish or chicken then It would be a greater wrong To kill that human because you're robbing a greater depth of experience from the world So in that only in that case would you make that that distinction there? But we're talking about killing them for taste pleasure um Raising them, uh, bring it breeding them into existence and killing them for taste pleasure All right, which is something we don't need to do At all But what you can then do is just you could just level out the the experience of the human to the chicken Let's just say and say Which one is okay to kill now if your metric for morality is sentience You just you just level out their sentience and one's a human one's a chicken Like, you know, you do have there are like peter singer has his marginal case argument There are marginal marginal case human beings or there are human beings with these kind of um Uh, you know the the same capacity of say a cow or a chicken these they do exist and we would protect them So, yeah, so I don't I don't see why not it's an argument from consistency. We're both sentient beings you argue Uh, that speciesism is is not right. It's a it's a form of discrimination like racism or sexism But at the same token you you you now have contradicted yourself You know and using a speciesist position, um, maybe alex needs to Further his um hypothetical so that he does uh, sort of equalize the Experience of the human and the animals further so he can see that it's even more of a contradiction. Let's go so to be clear in in the situation I described of raising Isolated human beings until they're 18 and then killing them secretly The the thing that's wrong about that in your view Is just the fact that there's a risk That this might cause other human beings to be scared that somehow they're going to get caught up in it I mean I can imagine Very strict laws in place that unless you were born a member of this particular Set of human beings who are bred in particular to be kept isolated and to be bred for food Perhaps for just the sake of our taste pleasure Unless you're a member of that group You're you're not allowed to be touched by by anybody You can you can imagine the laws are incredibly strict on this and you could say sure well There's a there's a sense in which people might think there's a disrespect for human lives that may one day eventually evolve Into a problem for us, but you could say the same thing about animal consumption You could say you know if you're if we're if we're going to Begin to recognize a speciesism in the way that we think and we're kind of okay with killing animals And shouldn't we be terrified that one day will be okay with killing humans too? And we think no because we've put very strict boundaries around this Not just morally but also legally that sure you can kill a pig, but you can't kill a human being in this situation Where i'm killing human beings Early-ish in their lives, you know say 18 years old None of the humans who are going to be killed find out all of the humans who do know about this practice Know that they're never going to be a member of that group of people Is the the only thing that could be wrong with that in your view Just the small risk that sort of something might go wrong there and people might be scared Is there not something wrong with the killing? Yeah, like Is that the only thing wrong with it? That's people would be scared. This is where utilitarian This is why there's a huge problem with you pure utilitarianism in my view, right? And I think in most rational People's view you need to have a combination of brights And factoring in well-being and suffering and there needs to be kind of like a threshold Like threshold deontology is something that I learned from Like two youtube philosophers avi and Isaac where You know if you have pure rites There's got to be a point to which you scale up the suffering on the other end of an action to which let's just say If not if killing this person and violating their rights stopped a universe full of suffering to not kill that human would be Even though it would be respecting this deontologic rule of not killing it would be a moral Crime not to kill and rob their that individuals rights because let's just say there's 10 million or 100 million people who will suffer to death Um if you don't do it So that's why there needs to be a combination There's some some some threshold to which you would have to forego the right of the being And where that threshold hit is it's quite it would be quite higher because otherwise you could justify things like medical testing You know for you know, you could justify things like Taking five organs out of one person So I'm not saying like just because three people benefit from one person that would the rights would still protect them It would be some higher threshold like really high But this is where like utilitarianism goes really wrong when you don't have rights in there is because like He's more concerned with a few people getting scared than someone being murdered and eaten A human being being murdered And eaten. Why do you think murder is so wrong? It's wrong because they they had a Prospect to continue their existence and that's why we have very strict murder laws because no one wants to be murdered It's it's you lose your life. You lose your life We should have sovereignty over our own lives We should have a right to our own existence You shouldn't be able to take that away from someone and if you did it in a in a way that no one knew about it And no one else suffered and they had no family members. It's still wrong. It's intrinsically wrong And you also have to say of course that these humans would not have existed at all There's no way in which they would have come into existence Um, except that they were going to be killed at 18 for some reason Yes, to the same extent that an animal on a on a humane farm as you describe it Might not have existed unless it was going to be killed for food Yeah, I see. I mean, you know, if I think you're describing as a situation that is hypothetical to test our intuitions Which is perfectly fine. I don't think that there could be a real world analog of this The idea of hypotheticals is to test your moral view for consistency logical consistency into It's we want to put your ethical views to the test. He's a philosopher. He's a professor He understands the value in hypotheticals Now if he's going to say well, that's not a real world scenario But that's where your your moral view leads and there are very real world applications of this in action and there are potential horrific applications of The philosophy of pure utilitarianism and I can think of So many like if five people get pleasure more pleasure Then they're from raping one individual even if it's one increment more pleasure that increment would then favor it as being good Even there are so many real world applications of a pure utilitarian view that are Sick if you don't have rights in there You know, so, um, he's saying that this is hypothetical doesn't apply to the real world. Yes, it does But if you say, you know, let's let's ask that question hypothetically under these circumstances Um, then I agree. It's it's very hard for a utilitarian to say Why this is wrong? given that given that These 18 year olds have good lives that they would not have had otherwise and Um, we we have to assume of course that nobody else is harmed by this So it's that's another hypothetical thing that we haven't really touched on So peter singer just bit the bullet kind of thing on Not as a utilitarian not seeing why it's wrong to breed humans into existence that would not have otherwise existed um And killing them to eat them at 18 years old so long as no one else is harmed because of it. It's an absolute Disgusting rights violation. Any human rights activists would think this is just this absolute sickening view Basically, what you're saying is a human holocaust for taste pleasure. They would be like a minority group Of beings who didn't ask to exist who are existing For 18 years and killed before their time Just so we could eat them Literally, that's what he doesn't see a problem with presumably they have they have Mothers anyway, um, you know that uh, who might care for them and I'd want to be separated from them and want to know what happens You could say, okay. Well, let's assume we've developed We we've developed gestation, um, you know in a in a serum or something like that So, uh, we they actually have no mothers, you know, we've produced the the eggs and the sperm and yeah You just remove the mother out of the like he's you know, he sees where this is going You could just keep altering the hypothetical and see where his view lies. I mean, yeah, if you do all that then it's It's difficult for me to say this is intrinsically wrong It's difficult to say this is intrinsically wrong I mean, I think that this is where he just lost the entire population of people Uh, this is why I have a rights-based view. Um, I say rights-based because it does factor in suffering and well-being as well, but like And you also have to factor in the rights of others and you know, like as long as there's no rights competing and you know You've have a right to defend yourself and things like this But uh, you just lost everyone mate. You just bit the bullet on, you know, this is why utilitarian I think it's just laugh aboard a certain point. Pure utilitarianism has really like utilitarianism. You could think of context where it's really helpful Um, but you can just think of context where it reduces to absurdity Or I might draw a further analog with the animals and say that these animals Also have mothers or children depending on sort of when they're being killed who might sort of emotionally depend on each other as well And and you sort of run into Potentially the same problems. Yeah, so basically he was saying as long as the human beings didn't have mothers And they were they were kind of born in a test tube But that would be okay But the animals in animal agriculture on this free range farm would also have families is what alex is saying So I don't see how that's like is that what you call a category error He can't impart that on the on the hypothetical the in the human case because there is in the animal case They do have families. So you would have to You would have to basically embed that into the the human hypothetical and say they do have families They're born to mothers But you would have to kind of try equalize the human mothers and and and the same amount of suffering a cow Or like mammals these these mammals that we use for For their flesh the the same amount of like mourning and suffering would be in the in the human case That's how I would apply that hypothetical and I think that's what alex is saying here So I think it's um important that when you're using in in the human case that you kind of You try to equalize the the experience of both the human and the cow You sort of create that hypothetical and then it basically becomes much more analogous. I mean a humane Beef farm or something is still going to involve killing animals who have relations to other animals that are At least seemingly going to be emotionally distressed by that But also, I mean whichever way we sort of make the analogs actually analogous Can you understand why some people would see this as something of a reductio out absurdum of the utilitarian position? the idea that Yes, sure. I have an intuition that suffering is bad and and I think that uh a lot of The strength of utilitarianism comes from that intuition that when we experience suffering we know that it's bad for us But we also have a pretty strong intuition that killing humans even in the conditions that I've described Would be wrong and some people sort of weigh these up and they say as as sensible as utilitarianism as utilitarianism seems In in the abstract in principle if it does lead to such a conclusion, it simply can't be right Alex mate, is this the same alex? I remember him saying um The animals don't have a right to life because they die in crops in a video So that was like a way to say an animal shouldn't have rights. It shouldn't have legal rights um So this is actually interesting to see him take this This position, I don't know if he held this position before it felt like he didn't but now he's pushing peter singer on the fact that the utilitarian reduces to absurdity when you Start making these kind of hypothetical situations Because let's just say you wanted to create laws based on utilitarianism and and only on utilitarianism because that for me These moral concepts these moral frameworks should be you should be able to apply them into law Shouldn't you if you applied utilitarianism into into law date rape would be legal Because you could put someone to sleep you could rape them And if they woke up and didn't feel anything and you'd got pleasure from it a utilitarian position would say that's absolutely fine But a rights position would say you just violated their right to Bodily integrity to to sovereignty over their own body. You just you just rape them And most and our laws are based on rights Our laws are based off of human rights Aren't they they're right? They're rights based laws like it's wrong to murder unless it's in self-defense Okay, but if you if you go to the judge. Hey, I killed them. They didn't have any family. No one knew about it I disposed of their body. I shot them straight in the head. They died humanely. Um And I ate them and I got some pleasure out of it and no and they didn't even have a family No one even knew about it. No one suffered because of it. No one got scared because of it. That is the insanity of applying Utilitarianism pure utilitarianism into law think about it Does he disagree with rights in law? Does he disagree with the if you violate these these rights to not want to be sexually abused and Nerded does he disagree with those being encoded into law rights based laws? This is this is actually really good from alex. So I don't accept that The judgments that you make under hypothetical circumstances, which are not part of the real world are a test of The underlying ethical theory What did he just say that he said that the hypothetical you just created does not test the underlying theory They literally are the test of the underlying theory. What are you talking about? Of course, they test the underlying theory is alex supposed to take it out to the real world and just do it and see if you Consider it moral or immoral. He has to apply it. He has to produce our hypothetical to test your ethical theory There's no other way and there are literally things that happen in the real world that do test utilitarianism Like the case with five people gaining pleasure off of Sexually abusing one person, you know, these things happen all the time. Are you supposed to say well, you know, they get more They got more pleasure than suffering out of that So, yeah, I think that I think that that's actually it should be legal. Like are you never going to say that? So the utilitarianism does apply out to the real world and the only way to test it Is by applying a hypothetical to test its consistency and seeing where it reduces to what it reduces to what the reductio is Which alex did now you're saying That I don't think that let's just repeat it. So I don't accept that The judgments that you make under hypothetical circumstances, which are not part of the real world are a test of The underlying ethical theory what a cop out I can't believe that because he just reduced you to absurdity the position to absurdity And peter singer is a very intelligent person. He's a professor. He's much more educated than than i'll ever be probably But I just don't I think he's really trying to hold on to this utilitarianism stuff like Because the judgments we make are those That we have intuitively you've used the word, you know our intuitions yourself. Um that have Evolved and developed in circumstances that are part of the real world This is ridiculous This is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe this you could apply utilitarianism out to the real world real world right now And it's insane. It leads to insane conclusions. So i'm supposed to say, you know what peter singer said utilitarianism like you just You know is is the way to go. So if I just make some calculus of it of well-being over suffering Whatever, you know, don't factor in the rights of the individual then if I get extreme amounts of pleasure from torturing one dog And it's just outweighs the calculus of suffering then I can just go around torturing dogs Utilitarianism has really insane real world applications Pure utilitarianism and it's very good in the real world that we have this strongly negative Intuition that to kill an innocent human being I would say Unless they've strongly requested for some good reason like they're terminally ill To kill an innocent human being is is wrong So, uh, you know, it's not that I want to change the intuitions I'm just saying when you give purely hypothetical examples um, they don't refute the underlying theory because The intuitions are ones that have arisen in circumstances other than the hypothetical ones you've described That was just a bunch of Nonsense in my view. No the hypothetical is testing your ethical view and it leads to absurdity Okay, and you're saying we should have these intuitions that killing a human is wrong But in in in your ethical view, it's not necessarily wrong You know, so which one is it? Like obviously we should have human rights protecting us from murder yet And why wouldn't those human rights apply to the people in the the human farm scenario that alex proposed All of a sudden human rights don't matter like I don't know It's just like utilitarianism is not a rights Approach we need rights protecting us We need them as well as we need to factor in well-being and suffering as well But we need rights and animals need rights That's the only thing that's going to protect them animal rights encoded into the law books is the only thing that will actually protect them Not this calculation calculus of like a little bit of suffering ever well-being and this and that no they need they need like a Right in law saying that we cannot kill them for our own ends. I'm sort of imagining a Uh an argument from marginal cases that might be put forward here. It's just it's interesting I mean, you're the person who popularized the term speciesism in many people's account And speciesism is something like the unwarranted Differential treatment or discrimination on the basis of species alone It seems to me that if if you can imagine a world as you as you write in this interview In which people sometimes enjoy the the luxury of humanely killed Animals from a from a humane farm But you you can't imagine the same thing for human beings You say that there's sort of a Practical reason why you think that human scenario could never occur But suppose it was on a very strict metric suppose it was something to do with mental capacity That's imagine that if a human being is is born with such a limited cognitive capacity that they essentially don't have any self-awareness or They sort of just don't know what's going on Or there's some kind of cognitive tests that we install That says that if you're below a certain cognitive ability, you know, we're if if the mother consents if the parents consent then we're able to Kill these as opposed to we find that they taste really really nice and there's sort of a luxury meat market for these Disabled children and perhaps some parents are intentionally having these children And we say look you don't need to fear that this is going to affect our general View of killing other human beings because this only applies to a very strict set Of human beings that were intentionally created for this purpose have very limited cognitive capacities Even if we could imagine such a world I think We would imagine it with some disgust But I don't think there's a way to picture that world with disgust But picture a world in which we're killing humanely raised animals with with with no problem Without committing ourselves To some charge of speciesism So what alex has done here is he's used peter singers argument from marginal cases Against peter singers utilitarian view and he's seeing that there's a contradiction here or a speciesist peter singer Help popularize the term speciesism, and I can't believe you can't see this is a blatant speciesism You wrote the book animal liberation like I've got to read this book I think he talks about speciesism in there. Um, I've heard him talk about speciesism in some of his speeches I've watched a fair few of peter singers speeches I can't believe he doesn't see this and alex is pointing this out to him and alex was inspired to go vegan from I'm peter singing and you're probably one of the reasons why alex is not a vegan anymore But uh, he didn't have that right space view, but it seems to me like alex is Really pushing on this. He won't let it go. I mean he this is he's This is the the longest part of the discussion because alex keeps pushing and pushing him on it trying to get him to To bite this bullet he really wants to know if this is his position And I think he's making it Very crystal clear with his questioning and the way that he's formulating his hypotheticals and the way that he's He's try equalizing the human scenario with the animal scenario He's really getting to the bottom of peter sitting at singers position just to make 100 crystal clear What his position is and let's just see where it goes. Let's just see where peter singer He's either he's either got to contradict himself and say that even if we equalized The human scenario with the animal scenario It's still not okay to do it to the humans, but it's okay to do it to the animals That would be a contradiction or he's got to say it's actually okay to do it to both humans and animals when you equalize these these traits that I would consider morally relevant So let's see which way he goes. Well, I don't think I don't agree with that because as you said When speciesism is the unwarranted discrimination against beings on the base of their species um So the question is what's warranted and what isn't is obviously there I just don't get it man. I can see that peter singer is not so sure about well He's I feel like he's he's under a bit of pressure here because alex has got him in the spot where I would get him Actually, it's just exactly where I would go with with peter singer I've gone here before with other utilitarians and and and they almost always To be like just to remain consistent to save face whatever it is Go with biting the bullet and then you just scale up And watch them like go. Oh my god. I've just bit the bullet on some horrible thing but I just I can just see he's uncomfortable here with this with answering this but um, it's not in any case in the case that I'm talking about I think It's not the it's not the species that's doing the work. It's the lack of awareness of The circumstances on the part of the being and if you're saying Well, this could apply to human beings again, you know hypothetically under some circumstances. Yeah, it could There you go instead of contradicting himself. He's chosen to remain consistent. This is what utilitarians Generally do they will be like it's okay in the animal case And it's also okay in the human case and then you just scale up the human case So it's okay to do it to humans. Is it if you equalize these these traits Yes, well then is it okay to do it to a trillion of these humans? Universes full of these humans I just keep scaling it up and they'd have to say. Yeah. Yeah, it is but that you know, then we've again stepped into this hypothetical realm where I don't think our intuitions are decisive in saying whether this is right or wrong The point of hypotheticals is to test your moral view and it's done a very good job at testing your moral view And uh, that that moral view leads to absurdity And it's not one that I would and I'd implore anyone who has this utilitarian moral view where they just focus on The the suffering reducing suffering or you know This well-being suffering calculus and they don't have rights in their view to really look at this discussion here and see Where it leads would you want a society that built laws off of this principle? I wouldn't I'd rather the the rights-based approach that we have right now for humans And I want it for animals too. Yeah, I mean I think people listening will perhaps see what you're saying and understand why it's it's difficult to to condemn as a utilitarian this uh This this treatment of humans in the hypothetical scenario and as you say, this is a hypothetical just to test our intuitions but I suppose what i'm trying to do is figure out what it is that's wrong and I I just want to make sure that i'm understanding you correctly. Alex is just really making sure here And he's really pushing him here like I just like I just couldn't I expected maybe to go off on a different topic But he's really trying to get to the bottom of it Like 1 million percent get to the bottom of it in the situation of killing human beings early on in their lives Is the thing that's wrong with it? The sort of knock-on effect. This is going to have Psychologically on other human beings. Is it in other words? Not wrong for the person being killed This is the silence there So you say it's only bad for the others who might know about it, but it's not bad for the one that's being murdered essentially the silence is It's okay. So not bad. Yes. Basically. Basically. The reason it's wrong is the knock-on psychological effect Oh my god, dude The reason it's wrong is only the knock-on effect it would have of me murdering someone It's not wrong for murdering someone is it wrong for the person being killed as part of an overall practice where the person being killed would not have existed if That person were not going to be killed at some relatively early age And if the life that the person has is a good one up to that point Then I would have to say that the overall practice is not wrong for the person being killed the person couldn't complain because the Response would be you wouldn't have even existed and you've enjoyed the years that you've had um, so We haven't wronged you I cannot believe I honestly am shocked. He just said that a an individual a a conscious feeling intelligent sentient human being Could be in the world and just because we gave them life you think it's then Okay, or they couldn't complain for being murdered. I just I think that's a that's a twisted view Once one has sentience or a conscious experience They then have a right to continue that conscious experience We do not have a right to take that from them even if we brought them into the world in a test tube All right That is that and and you're an and you claim to be the father of the animal rights movement Or he's been maybe he doesn't claim that but people call him the father of the animal rights movement This is nothing to do with rights This is this is a twisted kind of plot of a horror movie If any of these views are in that book animal liberation, I would not read it or I would not I probably you could read it. Obviously you could read it, but if these views are in there Um, then they need to be challenged obviously the people can have their view obviously pete can have his view But that's a it's a it's an insane bullet to buy it I just can't believe it that is oppression. That is uh, just crazy violation of a sentience beings right to exist and a completely inconsistent um Insane just hypocritical Uh position like a human race could take that we would take these these human beings breathe them into existence in test tubes Provided they didn't wouldn't have had a life otherwise Giving them a good life and then shoot them in the head at 18 and eat them I just I just can't imagine anyone would would would hold the position that that's okay I've I've met actually there are some there are some but I I see them as like Just a bit loony. I would never accept that I would be fighting for the rights of those Those human beings and I'll be trying to stop it. Yeah, I mean, I'm presuming if you asked the person in question sort of Have you had a good life? Would you rather have not been born at all? They would probably say that they'd rather be born and undergo that experience. I would I would contest that No, you wouldn't want to be born and an experience life and then only to be shot in the head I just don't know how as a society we could accept accept a standard like that Like you're bringing your children into existence, you know what I mean? They didn't ask to be brought into existence and then to be murdered. You know what I mean? They didn't ask for that It would just be a crazy standard to hold like okay. I brought my kids into existence, you know what I mean? And yet you wouldn't have existed otherwise. Do you like existing? Okay, well, it's fine to murder you then like, you know what I mean? It's just it's okay now because you wanted to exist Well now that you know what existence is you want to exist that very fact that they That we believe existing in a in a happy state is good It's it's an injustice to rob that from someone after they do exist. I mean, it's just it's just a crazy It's just morally repugnant, you know, I mean it's just wrong for most people There does still seem to be something wrong with this and Parfit imagines that we have A few intuitions and we essentially have to abandon one of them We either have to abandon the idea that you can you can somehow I mean you he says that you must in order to harm someone you must leave them worse off That's one intuition that we have Another intuition in situations like this where we kill human beings who otherwise wouldn't have existed at all is wrong And I think there's one other and he essentially says look these all seem intuitively true But we have to abandon one of them and I guess for most people They probably abandon one of the other ones, but it's uh, it's interesting to hear you just I guess not and because you might not share that intuition but to but to bite that bite that bullet It's interesting to hear him bite the bullet of of yes, it is it's I can't believe he would bite that bullet. Of course Peter Singh understands this He's a professor who does talks and he's incredibly Well-renowned this guy like everyone knows him they teach about him in in ethics classes If his if his views are being taught about in ethics classes, I mean, I probably contact the school and go Please do not teach people about this view on um, whether or not it's okay to kill people if They had a good life and I like so it's just interesting to hear you bite the bullet on murder Essentially and just throwing rights out the window like human rights. His ethical theory has now been tested It's reduced to absurdity and these ethical frameworks. We should be encoding into law really It's supposed to be something that we should apply out to society with these ethical views in my view like if we have These ethical views we should look at how to how to encode them into law And we already have a pretty good one called human rights You know what I mean? And I don't know why we shouldn't apply that to animals because otherwise we have a direct contradiction there But human about but the way peter singer stays consistent is he said I don't believe that in rights for humans or animals That's what he's done So if you're a person who believes in rights for humans, right You should also apply that same idea to or that same principle to non-human animals Basically to be consistent or you can say we both don't deserve rights and take peter singers You reduce to absurdity and bite the bullet on um, you know There's this context in which you can just breed as many people and kill them and eat them As much as you want for eternity Um, and I don't want to see a world like that. I think that's a great plot for a horror movie I think there are a few horror movies that are similar to that Um, but yeah, uh, that's where his view leads And I think alex has got a look of a surprise on his face that he bit the bullet on that but Yeah, I would buy that bullet and you're quite right. I mean, I think it's There is some there is some intuition that has to go um, and I'm going to Stick with the one that says to have harmed you we have to have made you worse off than you would otherwise have been Well, what do you mean worse off than you would otherwise have been you would never have existed So I don't get it. So now you just got to say if you're going to say existence is a good thing and um You know, they led mostly good lives But it's not wrong to rob that existence out of the moral universe. It's not wrong to drain that utility by murdering them Let's don't get it I guess that's that that in a sentence is the rejoinder to this position of Exploitation or anti utilitarian sentiment that says there's still something wrong or there's still something harmful or or bad about these practices even if they don't Even if they don't inflict any suffering and what you just said there that You know in order to harm you must leave someone worse off You can't harm somebody by making them better off. I consider murder harm It's just it depends on what you mean by harm. Is it the suffering well-being calculus? Is it shooting someone in the back of the head and eating them? It's pretty harmful robbing their entire existence off of them It's pretty it's pretty harmful I don't know what you mean by harm Their body's going to be dead and eaten. You can't inflict a harm that leaves someone better off Than they were otherwise or maybe you can well then they would otherwise have been I think is what you have to say because you know Yes, maybe you could have made them much better off and or they could have been much better off But you stop them being much better off. Exactly. That's the that's the problem Yeah, with with a like, you know, what he's saying is Then they otherwise would have been because they wouldn't have existed at all So he's saying if you if you bring them into the world and give them his happiness But then you can you can cut off that happiness at 18 years old Um, the reason he's saying otherwise would have been because they could have continued to to be even more happy If you let them live I just think it's so so wrong and I just think intuitively and also just ethically like it's just the human rights violation And we shouldn't have a society that accepts these kind of human rights violations And I think we should extend that to non-human animals as well Okay, so alex has taken the opposing view to peter singer and this it feels like the way he words things It's not it's really ambiguous as to whether he's having these These problems or whether he's just directly challenging utilitarianism But it seems to me that alex is directly challenging peter singer's position here on humane killing, which is Actually, yeah, it's surprising and refreshing to see so I think that's that's good I don't know whether he already held these views, but he just Had a few bad days or something or I don't know But there's this there's one thing I just want to quickly address at the end of this And it's alex and peter singer on crop deaths I don't want to get into all of it because it's another This whole section is probably another 10 minutes or something Don't take my word as bond here. Just go watch it So you get their full context and everything they actually said I don't want to misquote people because i'm just doing this off of memory for myself here But alex says something like in this last part if crop deaths Happen what about um vegan bodybuilders who deliberately eat in a calorie surplus to build muscle And cause more of these crop deaths Which cause death and suffering to animals. They're deliberately doing that How come vegans don't attack like a vegan bodybuilder in a calorie surplus with the same energy? They might attack someone for choosing to eat factory farm meat here and there If you intentionally go into a caloric surplus Then what you're doing is you're paying for food that results in the death and suffering of animals That's not necessary for you to eat in order to be healthy I don't see that same kind of energy being presented to a vegan bodybuilder and my answer to that alex is that There is no real good solid evidence that crops are even A bad thing compared to the wild land that was there before beforehand if you think of wild land There's going to be birds eating prey. There's going to be animals eating each other There's going to be insects eating each other There could be even more suffering and death in a plot of wild land versus um a plot of Crop land. Secondly, I don't even see the death that happens in crops as a rights violation of these these beings Because there's a few different kinds of crop deaths. So it depends on what ones they're talking about But say protecting crops from insects, right spraying crops to protect them from insects. Now that's protecting A human food source that's very different to murder or the situation that you propose to Peter senior where you know, that's a rights violation. It's murder in the crop scenario We're just protecting the the the crops to be from being eaten by animals and insects If we don't do that, but then just follow that to its logical end Then we just allow insects to eat all our food and we just starve and die So the the consequence of that would be Just huge. So yeah, protecting property is not a rights violation So it's unclear and and also it's unclear as to whether a crop even causes less suffering and death That would otherwise have been there in a wild scenario So it might even be better to plow this land and put crops in it might cause less death. There might be less Uh animals in that same Space the higher crops might even protect more animals from being eaten by birds It's really better to be agnostic on whether it causes more death or less death because you don't know And my intuition to tell me it's probably caught it probably does cause less death So it's not even clear that it's wrong to eat out of a crop to begin with and that's what I would say to alex's argument where like Is it wrong for a vegan bodybuilder to eat a calorie surplus from crops that cause crop deaths? There's other points I could make on that. Um, but I think those ones are Absolutely fine to address it. Um And yeah, like I just uh wanted to make that video It's it's quite a long one, but as you can see it was an hour There's so many more things I could respond to in this podcast. I'm not going to there was too many But I'll just say that other than this last part about alex in the crop death situation. Um Him pressing Peter singer on his utilitarianism was actually quite good to see it. It's exactly it's almost exactly the the direction I would have went with him and would try to have reduced it to absurdity myself because I've done this so many times and I'll just like I always sit back in like Astoundment that they would bite the bullet on that because it just goes against the majority of people's intuitions when it comes to Whether or not we should be able to do that to humans or whether humans should have rights This is why having a rights in your ethical framework is so important And this is why the animal rights movement is so important We should factor in the the suffering of the animals as well But obviously we want them to have rights. So these situations cannot be Used as a reason or as a justification these situations of happy humane farms Which in reality whether that happens in reality is another question because they get investigated and exposed all the time And they're marginally different in in terms sometimes worse, you know, just depends In terms of welfare if we if we believe in animal rights Then we boycott the industries that violate their rights because then people won't be under any illusion That these animals are actually living net positive lives because that is an illusion And we don't want to have people to have that illusion Do we we want to say hey, you know what they're violating their rights? Yes, they are being cruel In some cases they might be being less cruel than other cases But in every case they're violating their their rights. They're being enslaved. They don't have any personhood They don't have any legal real legal protection from them being murdered And that's a rights violation We should boycott it and then we should create a culture of boycotting animal rights violations and promoting veganism and trying to get animal rights encoded into law And at the same time exposing cruelty that happened in farms And then there'll be a knock on effect for animal welfare there because they The more they're exposed the more they try to tighten up welfare But in the meantime we're fighting for animal rights and veganism. That's my view on that. Yeah interesting cosmic skeptic Pretty well done on this. I'm not sure if cosmic skeptic is thinking about going vegan again He had a mountain of criticism. I criticized the cosmic skeptic myself, but here I'm actually I actually like this approach He's taking here and I like him thinking about this topic And I don't know whether it was all the videos about this that made him start thinking about this a little more Or whether he already had that view, but he just he made I don't know. I just actually don't know but I'll just take this for face value right now There's some stuff. I disagree within it But like I'm gonna say in terms of um cosmic skeptic pressuring Peter singer on his views on animal ethics I think he did a really good job here. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you learned a lot and uh, yeah I'll uh See you all in the next video and also leave your comments down below. What do you think? What do you think? I um I obviously didn't address everything in the in discussion. I addressed this part. Um, what do you think? What do you think is alex okona? Going to be an animal rights activist Is he going to be a threshold deontologist or is he going to stay with the utilitarian standpoint? Is he just going to be concerned as a Negative utilitarian concerned with suffering or is he going to you know favor animal rights? Um, that would be interesting. Yeah, and it will he go vegan again once he sorts himself out Who knows but yeah, this was quite promising actually, but you know have to wait and see I must say that uh, I remain unconvinced on a great many of the points that you've Put forward here, but I'm glad that we had the opportunity to discuss them Peter singer Thank you so much for joining me again on the podcast