Is Raising Animals for Consumption Justified Because It Brings Them into Existence?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume IV, p. 46 of the PDF edition · English translation

7.1. Does consuming animals benefit them by bringing them into existence?

Consuming animals, although it causes their deaths, causes others to be born into the same system to replace them. It is sometimes argued that this makes consuming animals right since it would allegedly benefit them by bringing them into being. This argument has come to be known as the replaceability defense¹²⁴.

7.2. The argument does not apply to the vast majority of cases

A first problem with this argument is that, as we saw in chapter 1, an enormous number of the animals raised for consumption live lives that are, quite literally, hell. This is the case for animals born into factory farming, for example. So they are in no way benefited by being born into such conditions. Quite the opposite.

However, the proponent of replaceability could say that their proposal is precisely to reform the system of animal exploitation so that the animals lead positive lives. Of course, it is doubtful that this would be possible in practice, given the high demand for animal products. Regardless of that, however, it is possible to challenge the very idea that animals are replaceable. That is what we will see next.

7.3. Does conferring a benefit entitle one to inflict a harm?

The second problem with the replaceability defense is that, even if consuming animals caused them to be born to have positive lives, this does not necessarily imply that it is right to kill them. If it did, it would also be right for parents to kill their children, as long as they had given them positive lives and had other children to replace them.

If animals were not harmed by death, it might make sense to say that it is fine to kill them, as long as they had a positive life and were replaced. However, animals

are harmed by death because it prevents them from enjoying the positive experiences they would have if they stayed alive.

Of course, there are cases in which animals, if they stayed alive, would experience nothing but suffering. In those cases, dying is less bad than staying alive. However, this cannot be the case for the animals the replaceability defense refers to, since the argument tries to justify consuming animals by claiming that the practice would bring into being animals who would have positive lives. Under those conditions, however, such animals would be harmed by death, since it would prevent the continuation of a positive life.

In short, there may be reasons to cause animals to be born to have positive lives (for example, if one's goal is for the world to contain as many sentient beings with positive lives as possible). However, once animals are already leading positive lives, there are strong reasons against killing them, since they are harmed by death. Therefore, the fact that consuming animals could, under ideal conditions, cause certain animals to be born to have positive lives is not sufficient to justify consuming animals.

At this point the following question might be raised: if the harm of death lies in preventing the positive experiences someone would have, what difference is there between killing a being who already exists and failing to produce a new being, since in both cases someone is prevented from enjoying what is positive? The answer is that, in the case of sentient beings who already exist and lead positive lives, there are individuals who would be harmed by death. By contrast, in the case of failing to produce new beings, there is no one who would be harmed: all there is are countless possibilities of future individuals. To make this clearer, consider the following example.

Imagine that if a woman decides to become pregnant this month, individual A will be born nine months later, but if she decides to wait until next month, individual B will be born, from a different egg, and so on for the following months. Whether she decides to become pregnant now, next month, or at any other time, there will be many possible future individuals who will never come to be. But this is not the equivalent of killing someone who already exists, since in this case what there are are possibilities of future individuals, not individuals. If it were equivalent, then everyone who did not have as many children with positive lives as possible would have to be convicted of serial homicide. This strongly suggests that killing already existing sentient beings is a graver wrong than failing to produce new sentient beings with meaningful lives.

This does not mean that we must necessarily reject the goal of bringing about the greatest possible number of sentient beings with positive lives in the world over time. It means only that this goal does not seem to justify killing already existing sentient beings.

7.4. The objection that some animals are hardly harmed by death

It is sometimes argued that some animals (namely, those who allegedly do not retain strong psychological connectedness over time) would not be harmed by death and would therefore be replaceable. Below we will discuss two attempts to support this claim: the appeal to identity and the appeal to prudential reasons¹²⁵.

7.4.1. The appeal to identity

According to a certain theory, what makes someone the same individual over time is their psychological connectedness¹²⁶. According to this theory, a being who has no temporal sense of self (that is, who retains no memories and does not imagine itself in the future) is not the same individual over time: at each instant one individual is annihilated and another arises to replace it in the same body. Someone who accepts this theory might then say that, in the case of such a being, it makes no difference whether we keep that body alive or kill it and bring another into being¹²⁷, since either way the individual who exists now is annihilated (the only difference being whether the new individual will be born in that same body or in another).

One way of criticizing the theory of personal identity based on psychological connectedness is to accuse it of confusing two senses of the term "the same": the qualitative sense and the numerical sense¹²⁸. It makes sense to say that someone who has lost their memories "is no longer the

same" qualitatively (that is, in the sense of being very different psychologically from what they were before). This does not mean, however, that it is numerically another individual occupying that body and that the previous individual has been annihilated. It may very well be numerically the same individual, despite not remembering anything that has happened to them until then. If this is possible, then psychological connectedness does not determine the numerical identity of individuals (since, if it did, a total loss of memories would necessarily give rise to another, numerically distinct individual).

If psychological connectedness determined the numerical identity of individuals, then if we copied the psychological connectedness of someone who already exists into another brain, both would be numerically the same individual. Of course, in such a situation, both would think they are the same individual. But this does not mean that they really are the same individual. The most obvious reason to think they are two numerically distinct individuals is that what one experiences the other does not experience, and one's decisions affect their own body and not the other's body. In short, they are two distinct consciousnesses (that is, two distinct subjective points of view), despite having the same psychological connectedness. So if in this case we have two numerically distinct individuals with the same psychological connectedness, then psychological connectedness does not determine an individual's numerical identity.

Accordingly, if the theory of identity based on psychological connectedness is not correct, neither is the replaceability defense based on it.

One possible objection would be to agree that psychological connectedness does not determine numerical identity, but to argue that the reasons for avoiding death depend on qualitative identity, not numerical identity. On this view, what matters is keeping the psychological connections in existence, not their bearers. Consider, however, the following example. Imagine that a scientist promises that, as long as you pay a good sum, you will have an afterlife, and that it will be a very pleasant life. You gather your savings and pay the sum. The scientist then explains how the procedure will work: your psychological connectedness (memories, character traits, etc.) will be copied into another brain, in another body, and the being who lives in that body will remember being you and will think it is you, and will live the happy life you paid to have. Indignant, you protest: "But I (pointing to yourself) want to live the life I paid to have! This guy is another individual, even though he has my psychological connectedness!" The scientist replies: "I agree that this guy is another individual numerically, but he is the same as you qualitatively, since he has your psychological connectedness, and that is what matters." The point this example aims to show is this: if it makes sense for you to feel indignant about what the scientist did to you, then the reasons for avoiding death do not depend on qualitative identity, but on numerical identity. But if, as we saw earlier, psychological connectedness does not determine numerical identity, then the replaceability defense that appeals to psychological connectedness does not succeed.

7.4.2. The appeal to prudential reasons

Another attempt to argue that animals with little psychological connectedness are replaceable agrees that psychological connectedness is not relevant to determining an individual's identity, but holds that it is relevant to determining the strength of an individual's prudential reasons¹²⁹.

Prudential reasons are the reasons someone has to try to avoid negative events and to seek positive events that could happen to them. According to the view we are discussing, the strength of these reasons should be determined by multiplying how good or bad the event would be by the psychological connectedness the individual would maintain between the present moment and their "future self"¹³⁰.

On this view, beings with little psychological connectedness are not greatly harmed by death, even if it deprives them of very satisfying experiences (because the value of those experiences would then have to be multiplied by a very low number, corresponding to their psychological connectedness).

Consider, however, the following example. Imagine that Bia is still a five-year-old child and wants to see the pyramids of Egypt. Suppose, however, that if she travels now, while she has strong psychological connectedness with who she is now, the trip will be enjoyable, but it will be far more enjoyable if she travels when she is an adult. When she is an adult, however, she will have extremely weak psychological connectedness with who she is now (her memories, character traits, beliefs, desires, and intentions will have changed a great deal).

It seems that Bia has prudential reasons to prefer to make the trip when she is an adult, simply because the trip will be far more enjoyable for her. If this is correct, then psychological connectedness is not relevant to determining the strength of the prudential reasons someone has to seek positive events and, consequently, to avoid death.

This suggests that an individual who has little (or even no) psychological connectedness with their future is not necessarily harmed only slightly by death, since missing out on the positive events that death would prevent is not, for that reason, only slightly harmful to them. Therefore, an appeal to psychological connectedness does not seem able to show that nonhuman animals who, allegedly, have little psychological connectedness are only slightly harmed by death.

7.5. The objection that consuming animals could increase the total positive balance

Some authors¹³¹ have argued that if consuming animals caused them to be born to have positive lives, then, since each animal would be replaced by another after being killed, over time there would be many more animals being born and leading satisfying lives than if animal exploitation were abolished (since fewer animals would then probably be born). For this reason, they have advocated reforming animal exploitation so that animals lead meaningful lives, rather than abolishing animal exploitation.

One way of criticizing this position is, as we saw in section 7.3, to argue that the wrong of killing a being who already exists is not offset by the benefit of producing a new being who would lead a meaningful life. However, another way of criticizing it is to argue that, even taking into account only the goal of maximizing the total balance of well-being, if we take into account all the consequences (and not only the direct consequences of consumption), advocating the abolition of animal use seems far more likely to achieve that goal than an ideal that reinforces the idea that nonhuman animals are resources for humans.

The abolition of the use of animals as resources, by spreading the ideal of consideration for sentient beings, could motivate people to try to minimize the suffering and deaths that

animals endure as a result of natural processes¹³² (which, contrary to what one might initially think, affect an enormously greater number of animals than the number of animals who are victims of exploitation). It could also motivate people to try to minimize risks of future suffering, which, should they materialize, could be so astronomical that they would make the suffering that exists today (adding together the suffering resulting from human practices and that resulting from natural processes) a "grain of sand" by comparison.

The defense of consuming animals, on the other hand, reinforces speciesism¹³³ and the idea that nonhuman animals are mere resources, making it quite likely to contribute to their suffering also being neglected, whether its origin is anthropogenic or natural. Thus, if one's goal is to achieve the best consequences over time, one will have to prohibit replacement¹³⁴.

7.6. Conclusion

We have seen that there are good reasons to think that animals are, in fact, greatly harmed by death, all the more so under the ideal conditions the replaceability defense assumes, in which they would lead positive lives. In addition, we have seen that the wrong of killing a sentient being who has a positive life does not seem to be offset by the creation of new beings who would lead positive lives.

Finally, we have seen that, even if we did not take the harm of death into account and our goal were only to maximize the total balance of well-being, replacement would probably contribute to producing a highly negative balance of well-being over time. On the other hand, as we have seen, advocating the abolition of animal use, by promoting consideration for all sentient beings and the resulting concern with all the problems that could affect them, would be a very promising way of maximizing the total balance of well-being over time. If this is correct, then we have strong reasons to reject replacement.