"We all, thank goodness, feel a natural spark of sympathy for the sufferings of others. We need to catch that spark and fan it into a fire of rational and universal compassion." - Richard D. Ryder That specific quote, to me, incarnates the idea of "disciplined passion". Haven't yet read anything more than short articles by Richard D. Ryder. I would like to read his book on Painism. It's strange that he seems so overlooked in discussions of veganism, ethics, etc, when he coined possibly the most important word in that sphere.
Wonderful quote; thanks for sharing. I have not read the books either. I find Painism quite interesting though in that it combines-if I remember correctly-a suffering-focused approach to ethics with a rejection of ‘aggregationism’. It’s a bit like negative utilitarianism without the aggregation of pains across different beings.
@@DisciplinedPassion Yes, this seems to be more or less his idea. I have trouble with aggregation so I find this idea appealing. Simon Knutsson occasionally uses a seemingly similar principle of "always considering the worst-off individuals" when examining any issue (not necessarily in the case of decision-making - he uses this to consider, for example, the quality of life of an insect, or the overall quality the we might expect of the future).
@@josephancion2190 Interesting, thanks. I myself start to have serious doubts where the states being compared are very different (e.g., one extreme pain against many mild headaches). The idea that enough mild headaches (each had by a different individual) can, when ‘added up’, be worse than one individual’s prolonged agony, to me, is almost impossible to believe. I’d be interested to know what your view is on this, if you don’t mind sharing.
@@DisciplinedPassion Forgot to answer, but I have no doubt in saying that no amount of mild headaches can be as bad as a moment of torture for one person. Same goes for when we add up intense headaches. I realize now that, though I call myself a negative utilitarian as this is much more well known, and also fairly sufficient as a guideline to live life (for me, it involves trying to prevent a lot of existence, mostly through vegan outreach and even antinatalist outreach), I'm actually a painist when it comes to handling thought experiments and models. I realise that since existing pain is always real and uncompensated to the sufferer, it is better to have billions of individuals suffering intensely, than one individual suffering even more intensely. An implication of this idea in real life could be that I should logically fight for better animal welfare instead of making people go vegan (since in theory, what matters most is avoiding worst-case outcomes, a classic example being failed stunning at slaughter leading to animals being dismembered alive). But in this case, it's easy to see that animal welfare will not magically make the worst outcomes disappear. But I do realise that I'm very much more with Ryder than with more "suffering-calculating" negative utilitarians (though I do love Brian Tomasik), because when considering animals exploited by humans, I would find it more important to prevent the 1% of the very worst situations, than to halve the number of animals exploited every year. Really just the intuition that aggregation cannot mean anything and that preventing the worst is the most important thing - starting from the bottoms of the pits of hell, I suppose. These are complicated questions, but since we don't have that much control over the outcomes of what we do in life, the implications will probably not be extremely different as long as we're suffering focused. For now, my efforts are centered around helping prepare a dog meat tasting event in my city... I'm fairly hopeful that such an event, if successful, could prevent a lot of new painful existences.
@@josephancion2190 Thanks. My own view has shifted a bit on aggregation involving similar levels of suffering (the view I used to have is that any aggregation across individuals is illegitimate). A book that caused me to rethink some of this is Jonathan Glover’s Causing Death and Saving Lives. Regarding animal welfare, I’m inclined to agree with Gary Francione that ‘welfare standards will be driven primarily by economics and not morality’. Francione maintains that, for the most part, reforms have not been the result of welfare campaigns, but rather ones that would have happened anyway because they are economically beneficial for producers.
"We all, thank goodness, feel a natural spark of sympathy for the sufferings of others. We need to catch that spark and fan it into a fire of rational and universal compassion." - Richard D. Ryder
That specific quote, to me, incarnates the idea of "disciplined passion". Haven't yet read anything more than short articles by Richard D. Ryder. I would like to read his book on Painism. It's strange that he seems so overlooked in discussions of veganism, ethics, etc, when he coined possibly the most important word in that sphere.
Wonderful quote; thanks for sharing.
I have not read the books either. I find Painism quite interesting though in that it combines-if I remember correctly-a suffering-focused approach to ethics with a rejection of ‘aggregationism’. It’s a bit like negative utilitarianism without the aggregation of pains across different beings.
@@DisciplinedPassion Yes, this seems to be more or less his idea. I have trouble with aggregation so I find this idea appealing. Simon Knutsson occasionally uses a seemingly similar principle of "always considering the worst-off individuals" when examining any issue (not necessarily in the case of decision-making - he uses this to consider, for example, the quality of life of an insect, or the overall quality the we might expect of the future).
@@josephancion2190
Interesting, thanks. I myself start to have serious doubts where the states being compared are very different (e.g., one extreme pain against many mild headaches). The idea that enough mild headaches (each had by a different individual) can, when ‘added up’, be worse than one individual’s prolonged agony, to me, is almost impossible to believe. I’d be interested to know what your view is on this, if you don’t mind sharing.
@@DisciplinedPassion Forgot to answer, but I have no doubt in saying that no amount of mild headaches can be as bad as a moment of torture for one person. Same goes for when we add up intense headaches. I realize now that, though I call myself a negative utilitarian as this is much more well known, and also fairly sufficient as a guideline to live life (for me, it involves trying to prevent a lot of existence, mostly through vegan outreach and even antinatalist outreach), I'm actually a painist when it comes to handling thought experiments and models. I realise that since existing pain is always real and uncompensated to the sufferer, it is better to have billions of individuals suffering intensely, than one individual suffering even more intensely. An implication of this idea in real life could be that I should logically fight for better animal welfare instead of making people go vegan (since in theory, what matters most is avoiding worst-case outcomes, a classic example being failed stunning at slaughter leading to animals being dismembered alive). But in this case, it's easy to see that animal welfare will not magically make the worst outcomes disappear. But I do realise that I'm very much more with Ryder than with more "suffering-calculating" negative utilitarians (though I do love Brian Tomasik), because when considering animals exploited by humans, I would find it more important to prevent the 1% of the very worst situations, than to halve the number of animals exploited every year. Really just the intuition that aggregation cannot mean anything and that preventing the worst is the most important thing - starting from the bottoms of the pits of hell, I suppose.
These are complicated questions, but since we don't have that much control over the outcomes of what we do in life, the implications will probably not be extremely different as long as we're suffering focused. For now, my efforts are centered around helping prepare a dog meat tasting event in my city... I'm fairly hopeful that such an event, if successful, could prevent a lot of new painful existences.
@@josephancion2190
Thanks. My own view has shifted a bit on aggregation involving similar levels of suffering (the view I used to have is that any aggregation across individuals is illegitimate). A book that caused me to rethink some of this is Jonathan Glover’s Causing Death and Saving Lives. Regarding animal welfare, I’m inclined to agree with Gary Francione that ‘welfare standards will be driven primarily by economics and not morality’. Francione maintains that, for the most part, reforms have not been the result of welfare campaigns, but rather ones that would have happened anyway because they are economically beneficial for producers.