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Week 3: Radical Empathy

“The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”

– Jeremy Bentham (1789)

Should we care about non-human animals? We'll show how it can be important to care impartially, rather than ignoring weird topics or unusual beneficiaries.

We'll also cover expected value theory (which helps when we're uncertain about the impact of an intervention), and give some ideas for how we could improve the lives of animals that suffer in factory farms.

Key concepts from this session include:

Impartiality: helping those that need it the most, only discounting people according to location, time, and species if those factors are in fact morally relevant.
Expected value: We’re often uncertain about how much something will help. In such circumstances, it may make sense to weigh each of the outcomes by the likelihood that they occur and pick the action that looks best in expectation.
The importance (and difficulty) of considering unusual ideas: Society’s consensus has been wrong about many things over history (e.g. the sun circling the Earth, the morality of slavery). In order to avoid making similar mistakes, we need to be open to considering unusual ideas and moral positions, while still thinking critically about the issues and acting cooperatively with others.

Required Materials

Impartiality and radical empathy:

Radical Empathy - Open Philanthropy Project (10 mins.)
Moral Progress and Cause X (5 mins.)
On "fringe" ideas (7 mins.)
The possibility of an ongoing moral catastrophe (summary) (8 mins.)

Expected value

Expected Value (5 mins.)
Hits based giving (15 mins.)

The case for caring about animal welfare:

All Animals Are Equal - An excerpt from the opening chapter of Animal Liberation (1975), widely regarded as the founding text of the animal rights movement. (5 mins.)
Animal Welfare Cause report, Founders Pledge (10 mins.)

Strategies for improving animal welfare

Want to help animals? Focus on corporate decisions, not people’s plates. (10 mins.)
How Students Will Lead the Alternative Protein Revolution - Amy Huang (26 mins.)
Animal Advocacy Careers (website, explore)

Exercise (10 mins.)

This session’s exercise is about doing some personal reflection. There are no right or wrong answers here, instead this is an opportunity for you to take some time and think about your ethical values and beliefs.

A letter to the past (10 mins.)

This exercise asks you to explore what it would take to change your mind about something important.

Imagine someone from the past who held views characteristic of that time. Also imagine, for the sake of the exercise, that this person is not too different from you - perhaps you would have been friends. Unfortunately, many people in the past were complicit in horrible things, such as slavery, sexism, racism, and homophobia, which were even more prevalent in the past than they are now. And, sadly, this historical counterpart is also complicit in some moral tragedy common to their time, perhaps not out of malevolence or ill-will, but merely through indifference or ignorance.

This exercise is to write a short letter to this historical friend arguing that they should care about a specific group that your present self values. Imagine that they are complicit in owning slaves, or in the oppression of women, people of other races, or sexual minorities.

For the sake of this exercise, imagine your historical counterpart is not malevolent or selfish, they think they are living a normal moral life, but are unaware of where they are going wrong. What could you say to them to make them realize that they’re doing wrong? What evidence are they overlooking that allows them to hold their discriminatory views? You might want to write a few paragraphs or just bullet points, and spend time reflecting on what you write.

More to explore

An expanding moral circle?

The Expanding Circle pg. 111-124 ‘Expanding the Circle of Ethics’ section (20 mins.)
The Narrowing Circle (see here for summary and discussion) - An argument that the “expanding circle” historical thesis ignores all instances in which modern ethics narrowed the set of beings to be morally regarded, often backing its exclusion by asserting their non-existence, and thus assumes its conclusion. (30 mins.)
Our descendants will probably see us as moral monsters. What should we do about that? - 80,000 Hours - A conversation with Professor Will MacAskill. (Podcast - 1 hour 50 mins.)
The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe (full text of the required article, 30 mins.)

The case for caring about animal welfare

The Case Against Speciesism - Centre for Reducing Suffering (10 mins.)
Factory Farming - 80,000 Hours (5 mins.)
Should animals, plants, and robots have the same rights as you? - Vox (20 mins.)
Animal Liberation, Chapter 3 - Down on the factory farm (1 hour.)
2017 Report on Consciousness and Moral Patienthood - An investigation into what types of beings merit moral concern. (6 hours, skimmable)
Suffering in Animals vs. Humans (13 mins.)

Reforming animal agriculture

Dominion - Dominion uses drones, hidden and handheld cameras to expose the dark side of modern animal agriculture. (Film - 2 hours)
- Content Warning: Much of the film here can be extremely disturbing and includes graphically violent footage of factory farming. Please make sure to watch this in a moment without e.g. any upcoming deadlines or important meetings the same day. We include it because we think it’s important to really see how broken the world is.
Food impacts - a tool to explore the moral impact of different dietary choices.
A New Agricultural Revolution (~22 mins. and transcript available; Q&A after Friedrich’s talk is optional)

Wild animal welfare

Wild animal suffering: An introduction - Animal Ethics - An argument for us to take into account the wellbeing of animals that live in the wild. (10 mins)
Wild Animal Initiative’s FAQ

Criticism of EA-related animal welfare work

How the animal movement could do even more good (11 mins.)
EAA is relatively overinvesting in corporate welfare reforms - There is also an interesting response to this post from Saulius in the first set of comments. (7 mins.)
Against the Moral Standing of Animals - critique of arguments that animals deserve moral standing
What’s Wrong with Speciesism? - Argument that animals do deserve moral standing, but lower moral status