Agriculture Reference
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whether this is possible at all. Furthermore, and more fundamentally,
the Replaceability Argument is based on the Total View, which takes the
welfare of all existing and all possible beings into account in the evalua-
tion of outcomes. This view is controversial within utilitarianism.
2 The underlying idea of the Replaceability Argument
Within utilitarianism, as we have seen, actions are not categorically
permitted or forbidden. Whether an action is right or wrong depends
solely on its consequences in terms of welfare. Only the action that
maximizes aggregative welfare is morally right. If animal-friendly animal
husbandry is to be evaluated from this perspective, it must be admitted
that the killing of animals that would otherwise have had a happy future
seems, at first sight, to be impermissible, given that we have dismissed
the average view as a method of aggregation. After all, killing animals
implies a loss of the welfare that the animals otherwise would have had.
Let me illustrate the choice between killing and not killing the animals
by depicting the numbers. I will show the distributions of welfare in
both outcomes. Each distribution shows the condition of the animal at
different times, throughout its life. When the animal exists, its condition
is its welfare, which can be positive, negative or neutral. If the animal
does not exist at a time, I put an Ω to distinguish nonexistence from
neutral welfare.
1
One option is letting the animal live; the other option
is killing it. For simplicity's sake, I assume a constant welfare level of 4
throughout the animal's life.
The animal is not killed at t
5
: (Ω
1
, 4
2
, 4
3
, 4
4
, 4
5
, 4
6
, 4
7
, 4
8
, 4
9
, Ω
10
, Ω
11
)
The animal is killed at time t
5
: (Ω
1
, 4
2
, 4
3
, 4
4
, 4
5
, Ω
6
, Ω
7
, Ω
8
, Ω
9
, Ω
10
,
Ω
11
)
So, this shows the amount of welfare that is implied in each of two
outcomes: when the animal is killed at t
5
as compared to when it is
not killed at t
5
. From a utilitarian perspective, the consequences of two
possible actions - namely killing or not killing the animal at t
5
- matter.
Not killing the animal,
ceteris paribus
, results in more overall welfare and
is therefore required.
Now, the idea of the Replaceability Argument is that the welfare loss
due to the killing can be compensated by bringing into existence a new
animal, which would not otherwise exist and which will be at least as
happy as the killed one would have been. The outcome contains the
welfare of both the killed animal until its death and the newly created
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