Volume XII · The Essentials of Animal Ethics · chapter 16
Evaluating Different Strategies
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
To evaluate strategies, we can use metacriteria: tackling causes, preventing backsliding, how much it has already been tried, track record, how many animals it benefits, how much it benefits each one, potential to make other changes easier, risks, cost-effectiveness, acceptance, alignment with other goals, ease, and expected success.
Before choosing how to help, you can make a list of questions: Does this fix the cause? Does it help many? Could it go wrong? Is it easy? Who has tried it before? The answers help you choose better.
Before buying a car, we compare price, fuel economy, safety, and upkeep. Strategies can also be compared using criteria.
- P1 Different strategies can be compared using several metacriteria.
- P2 It remains to be worked out which criteria to include, whether an overall result is possible, and how much weight to give each one.
- P3 We also need objective data to score the strategies.
- C So evaluating strategies is an open field, with a research agenda.
The chapter’s central argument in logical form. If the premises are true, the conclusion follows. To disagree, you have to show which premise is false.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume XII, p. 55 of the PDF edition · English translation
Are there metacriteria that could be used to evaluate different strategies64? On the basis of the theoretical grounding we saw in chapter 9, we can derive some metacriteria. For example, we can always ask, for each strategy:
- Does it tackle the cause of the problem or only its symptoms?
- What is its potential to prevent the risk of setbacks?
- How much/how little has it already been tried?
- If it has already been tried, what is its implementation track record?
- How many animals would it potentially benefit?
- How much would each affected animal benefit?
- What is its potential to facilitate later changes?
- How great is the risk of negative knock-on effects?
- What is its cost/benefit ratio?
- Does it run the risk of producing low gains or even none?
- How large is the positive balance that can be expected over time.
- Potential for acceptance/rejection.
- What is its degree of alignment/conflict with other goals?
- Ease/difficulty of implementation
- What is the degree of expectation regarding its success?
- Does its success depend on other strategies being carried out?
Some challenges for further developments would be the following:
(1) It would have to be investigated whether all the parameters above should be included or not, and whether there are other important parameters that should be added to the list above.
(2) It would have to be investigated whether it is possible to offer an overall result, in terms of how much more/less promising one strategy is relative to another, taking all the parameters into account together, or whether such an assessment is possible only with respect to each
parameter separately, it not being possible to commensurate them.
(3) If the aim is to produce an overall comparison commensurating the various parameters, it would have to be investigated whether all the parameters should have the same weight, or whether there are some that should weigh more than others (and, if so, what their relative weight should be). It would also have to be investigated whether this weight would be fixed or variable and, if variable, how it should vary65.
(4) Investigating the possibility of obtaining objective data on how each type of strategy scores on each parameter.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
Which of these questions is on the list of metacriteria?
What challenge for future research does the chapter point out?
Food for thought
Pick an activist strategy you know and run it through the metacriteria.
Author’s notes 2
Sources cited in this text 1
The full list for the volume is in the Volume XII references.
- RODRIGUES, I. L. A. O sofrimento dos animais selvagens: pensando em soluções. 2025. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia) – Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), Pelotas, 2025.
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