Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
conditional nature of the judgment is why I cannot harm an entity by not bringing it
into the world (I do not harm another future child of mine by not bringing it into
the world). Such entities can be harmed neither now nor in the future since they do
not and will not exist. At the same time, such entities would benefit should I bring
them into the world and secure good living conditions for them. I can also harm
them, should I bring them into some kinds of life. I am claiming, then, that there is
an important temporal dissymmetry between harming/benefiting and some other ac-
tions, say, hugging: while I can only hug now an existing person, I can harm or be-
nefit now a nonexisting person, should that person exist in the future. The lack of a
specific subject to a relational predicate does not make such statements meaningless,
since the relation to a subject is established obliquely: “benefiting”/“harming” target a
nonspecified individual that will gain or lose by a certain course of action. Only in
hindsight can this statement gain a specified and well-defined referent. But it is per-
fectly meaningful prior to the instantiation stage. It is thus consistent to claim that a
vegan utopia will not harm the farm animals that will not exist, but a vegetarian uto-
pia will be a benefit to these, yet unborn ones. My comparative judgment that the
vegetarian utopia is better than the vegan one does not, then, rely on the present per-
spective of the nonexistent animals, but on the future ones who will be “grateful” to
discover that vegetarians rather than vegans won the day (we are, recall, discussing
perfect worlds).
While this argument convinces me, I have encountered enough opposition to it to
nonmetaphysical consideration that supports the same conclusion. Since vegans may
agree that the vegetarian may be able to provide farm animals with qualitatively good
lives, promoting a course of action that would radically diminish the number of such
lives is dubious. One need not be a utilitarian to perceive diverse lived experiences
as themselves valuable and meriting respect. This does not entail an obligation to
produce more lives or generate more species than those we currently have (the recog-
nition of the value of distinct and diverse human lives does not, for example, imply
that one is committed to creating more of them). Yet preserving diversity and a large
species, if it already exists, seems on the face of it a morally superior goal in com-
parison to the virtual elimination of such beings. Loving cows, sheep, and hens into
extinction is less plausible when set against the alternative of preserving those anim-
als by allowing them to coexist with humans when they can be provided with qualit-
atively good lives.
Vegans will argue that a vegan utopia is still an overall good because it will re-
duce the number of lives that should not be lived. This was always the argument
made against advocates of meat eating, who taunted vegetarians by saying that should
