Vegans vs. Utilitarianism, PCRM vs. Aaron Yarmel.

you might have seen news reports telling
Americans that they ought to continue eating meat including the most unhelpful varieties like sausage and hot dogs and bacon what's this about previously on x-men absolutely by definition any evil whatsoever can be justified by this equation now net happiness think about the meaning of the word net it's like net profit okay so net profit you earn a certain amount of money and it costs you a certain amount you lose a certain amount of money so you subtract the losses from the profits and what do you get you get the net net net income net profit what not okay in this same way you're talking about some a positive quantity of happiness or well-being and then subtracting the misery the harm the torture the suffering you inflict whatever it might be any evil whatsoever can be justified this way including killing cows in order to eat their flesh there's there's no end do it okay well a private company called nutria Rex published some articles in the annals of internal medicine and some of the articles were meta analyses which were nothing new except that they combined the results of prior studies that confirm that indeed if you reduce meat consumption you reduce your risk of cancer and heart attacks and stroke and diabetes but then they also published a study that said that if you ask omnivores what do they think about meat they say they like it for some it's important to them so the conclusion they arrived at and I am NOT making this up was that the benefit of reducing cancer risk and heart attack risk and stroke risk and diabetes just isn't worth it if it means reducing meat any evil whatsoever can be justified this way including killing cows in order to eat their flesh there's there's no end do it ok ok so I think that we need to be really careful and we're talking about the difference between any evil could be justified and any evil is justified ok I think that one thing that eyes L is criticizing and one thing where you know he and I are absolutely the same page about is that people often engage in utilitarian reasoning to justify really bad behavior so the point is that for all these ethical theories there are ways that we could miss apply them to real life cases in order to make it seem like we're justifying really bad things but once we actually look at the real world it's just not going to be the case that eating cows is going to be justified by utility calculus what is it that makes a philosophical argument good or useful or worthwhile out here in the real world not on a chalkboard in a university classroom not when you're trying to get an a-plus on an academic exam I'd say off the top of my head salience sincerity helpfulness all right salience when we philosophize what we're saying has to really be salient to the person we're speaking to to the situation we're speaking to can't be irrelevant and if this guy's case that's one of my big complaints about him is that he will just invent and errors and ascribe them to me that have nothing to do with my argument that have nothing to do with what I'm saying he will stop me in mid-sentence and say well I don't know if he's saying this but let's pretend that he is so I can show off that I have book-learning relevant to this other problem that's in no way salient to what he actually said or the point he's making it where it's gone certain salience salience is a big one it's a big factor here sincerity is it really possible that this guy is sincere when he says that he's just never heard of utilitarian arguments being made to justify killing cows tea meat he's just never heard this he claims to be a vegan and from fall downwards this is the totally unthinkable notion that there were people out there on the sidewalks doing interviews with vegan activists that are recorded and uploaded to YouTube there are people talking about the ethics of meat eating and they'll say to you straight to your face well you know it's true eating meat is bad for the environment and it causes all the suffering animals and it probably shortens your lifespan increases your chance of getting a heart attack in cancer zone but nevertheless when they think in terms of the pleasure pain calculus the brutal terms used by John Stuart Mill for this when they think in terms of their own felicity their own enjoyment their own pleasure their own utility nevertheless eating meat is in their minds justified the harm of being done just doesn't measure up to their enjoyment of it and hey tell you this but PCRM is in court right now I just played you guys a few short snippets neal barnard talking about that PCRM is pressing a case that may ultimately end up in court some kind of lawsuit against a peer-reviewed journal so step one is going to the editors going to the universities but probably steps two and three it may go past the University Ombudsman end up in a court of law um they are challenging an article that claimed in exactly this way that the health benefits of reducing meat so this is not even a vegan diet not even eliminating meat they claim the health benefits of reducing the amount of meat you eat justify the loss of pleasure the loss of felicity the loss of enjoyment and they have social science research to prove it of couse you can if you go out and interview a whole bunch of cocaine addicts and say to them hey are you aware that cocaine is bad for your health yeah are you aware that it's bad for you know your economic future that you're likely to die in poverty you're much more likely because you're using cocaine they say yeah you can talk them over through it's okay so now you know on a scale of one to ten the harm being done in your life by cocaine and then how much pleasure you get out of it and do you plan to continue using cocaine and they'll tell you they're crackheads they're going keep on being crackheads alcoholics are gonna keep on being alcoholics they're not doing this blind you think in the 21st century alcoholics believe whiskey is good for their health you think anyone doesn't know that vodka causes brain damage really you think they don't know that alcohol causes damage to an unborn fetus and so on and women keep drinking alcohol during pregnancy in the 21st century and they can sit down and give you an interview and think in purely utilitarian terms yeah this is the real world this isn't just something on a chalkboard in the university classroom this is the horrifying disturbing truth of being alive on planet Earth in 2019 is that people in their millions will justify any evil cocaine alcohol red meat the murder of cows the decimation of the rainforest ecological devastation you name it they will justify that in terms of their own pleasure and this historical tradition this philosophical tradition this ethical and political tradition John Stuart Mill was a member of parliament you know Bentham and mill these were political figures not just philosophical figures and he that's always been true of philosophy going right back to Socrates Socrates was a political figure and a religious figure and contest a philosophical figure this is not just in the parlor rooms is not just in university classrooms okay the political movement that is utilitarianism the philosophical tendency and method of the pleasure pain calculus yeah this is part and parcel of what we're dealing with here in the real world when vegans have to stand up and say hey there are things that matter more than your enjoyment okay in the in the same way that we have to challenge all kinds of other evils in human history that people are attached to that evils that have become so familiar through their cultural upbringing that they're not perceived as evils at all choices that people don't even think they're making because they never even thought they had a choice they didn't grow up choosing between a vegan diet and a meat-eating diet they just grew up with food the way their grandmother made it for them they just grew up being told have another drink of whiskey it will do you good and not questioning what does it mean for whiskey to do me good it's doing you brain damage but you perceive that brain damage as relaxing and millions of people's lives are destroyed by it alright this is not hyperbole okay so for you to come on camera again lack of salience lack of sincerity maybe it's just lack of intelligence but once we actually look at the real world it's just not going to be the case that eating cows is going to be justified by utility calculus did you think that sounded intelligent do you where did that come from where did it come from your self confident assertion that nobody would ever justify killing cows to eat meat in terms of utilitarian calculus in terms of pleasure versus the harm done that is in court right now PCRM is press the case right now absurdly enough against a peer-reviewed scientific paper making precisely that argument so the conclusion they arrived at and I am NOT making this up was that the benefit of reducing cancer risk and heart attack risk and stroke risk and diabetes just isn't worth it if it means reducing meat in millions of people around the world make the same argument informally in their kitchens parents talking to their children where the children are vegan and the parents are still eating meat on the sidewalks vegan activist talking a stranger all around the world sure this is a major philosophical question people deal with in real life and your response to it shows the extent to which your experience in academia getting a master's degree now getting a PhD Erin the extent to which this has divorced you from the reality of what philosophy is all about what it always has been about since Socrates okay if you're gonna do this thing if you're going to be a public intellectual on on YouTube and I encourage you to do so maybe when you've done 500 videos when you've done a thousand videos you'll be better at this okay you've got to keep it salient you've got to keep it sincere and you've got to keep it helpful what is helpfulness about is at the core of philosophy because philosophy ultimately is a problem-solving method right philosophy is not about who has more citations me or you right it's not about who can use more jargon me or you you recognize what the problem is whether it's the problem the other person is suffering with directly or a problem on a social scale or maybe a problem on a more metaphysical abstract level but whatever you recognize what the problem is and then you present your arguments in a way that's helpful okay and it's a struggle for me okay I didn't make this video three days ago cuz three days ago I was at the gym I went to the gym three times on one day I was all pumped up dealing with a back injury I've had all kinds of problems and I knew I was gonna sound angry as hell if I got on camera there's point of sorry when it's gay it's not always that easy for me to sound helpful okay the problem of utilitarianism and its consequences in our life in our political culture right now that's a real problem to grapple with and I would encourage you to come back on camera and talk about this in a more sincere in a more salient and ultimately in a more helpful way because it's not about who's right and who's wrong you were me right it's about what kind of society do you want to have in the future and what are you willing to do to get it in the next five years people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know