Taboo Trades
Taboo Trades
Created To Be Killed with Jeff Skopek
My guest today is Jeff Skopek, a Professor of Law and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine, and Life Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge.
His research explores the normative and conceptual foundations of health law, focusing in particular on the health care system, biomedical research, and controversies about what constitutes a harm or benefit within medical care. His recent research also focuses on animal rights. He joins us today to discuss a work in progress, Created To Be Killed.
Show Notes
About Mason Marché
[00:00] Jeff Skopek: And since then, my thinking on various questions has evolved significantly. So in some areas, sort of evolved, led to a solidification of certain views. So, for example, my view that animals have rights such that it's generally wrong to kill them, to make them suffer, to treat them as mere means to human ends, et cetera. But in other areas, I found that hard questions actually emerge. So the. The more you dig in, you start to realize that some things aren't as clear as you might have thought they were. So this project tackles one of those questions.
[00:36] Kim Krawiec: Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Taboo Trades Podcast, a show about stuff we aren't supposed to sell, but do anyway. I'm your host, Kim Kravik. My guest today is Jeff Skopic, a professor of law and the Deputy Director of the center for Law, Medicine, and Life Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. His research explores the normative and conceptual foundations of health law, focusing in particular on the health care system, biomedical research, and controversies about what constitutes a harm or benefit within medical care. His recent research also focuses on animal rights. He joins us today to discuss a work in progress created to be killed. Hey, Mason, thanks for joining me today.
[01:37] Mason Marche: Yeah, of course. I'm happy to be here.
[01:39] Kim Krawiec: Yeah, me too. So why don't we start by having you introduce yourself to our listeners?
[01:45] Mason Marche: Yeah. So my name is Mason Marche, and I'm a 3L here at UVA Law.
[01:49] Kim Krawiec: I have to confess, Mason, it's the first time I noticed the accent on the E of your name.
[01:53] Mason Marche: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
[01:55] Kim Krawiec: I was pronouncing it Marsh. Okay.
[01:57] Mason Marche: No, all good.
[01:57] Jeff Skopek: Everybody does it.
[01:58] Kim Krawiec: Okay. Well, it's funny. It's probably on my roster, but the print is so small I can barely see it. But now I can.
[02:05] Mason Marche: Who knows at this point?
[02:06] Kim Krawiec: Now I can see it.
[02:07] Speaker D: Okay.
[02:09] Kim Krawiec: Okay. So, Mason, you specifically chose this episode as the one you wanted to be a co host of. So what was it about the paper or the topic that made you want to get more involved in this one?
[02:22] Mason Marche: Yeah, I mean, so I'll just say that I am a meat eater, and I have not really watched any of those, like, very popular documentaries on, like, the horrors of factory farming. But my partner and I do have a dog, and as we've kind of walked him around the neighborhood, and you meet all of the other people with dogs you see over and over again, I've had kind of a lot of complicated thoughts in the last few years about selective breeding and kind of what the end game is for us as to why we're doing it, and also what the end game is for these animals who have various qualities of life. And so I'm really kind of interested to see how some of this research and some of this thinking on factory farming kind of translates.
[03:07] Kim Krawiec: Yeah, I'm interested in that, as well as other things. I mean, I feel pretty confident that Jeff has thought more about these issues than anyone else I know, even though I do know a lot of people. I'm like you. I am a meat eater. I have many friends who are not meat eaters and do not use animal products for ethical reasons. And yet I feel like Jeff has thought about these issues in a more systematic and meaningful way than probably most people. And so I'm interested in hearing from him about that. So, Mason, you have questions for today. Your classmates have questions for today. What are some things that you're hoping to get out of the conversation?
[03:46] Mason Marche: Ooh, I'm really curious to see just what his general background and overarching thoughts are on this paper. Cause I feel like, as I was reading it, there's a very specific purpose to this paper.
[03:59] Jeff Skopek: Paper.
[03:59] Mason Marche: And maybe I'm not in on the conversation. And so I'd love to kind of test my understanding of what it really means to be created, to exist versus to be created to kill in kind of a more approachable, conversational format.
[04:16] Kim Krawiec: Yeah, I'm interested in that, too. And I'm going to ask him this, but I do have the sense that the paper is written for people who are already fairly steeped, and in addition, who are advocates of or thoughtful advocates of animal rights, and some at some level. And if that's wrong, Mason, you and I will just delete all of this and record something else that makes us sound like geniuses. Only kidding, audience. We actually are geniuses. We don't re record anything else, Mason, that you want to get out of the conversation?
[04:51] Mason Marche: No, I'm just really curious to see. I think my classmates have a lot of really great questions, and so I'm excited to hear his responses to them.
[04:58] Kim Krawiec: Yep, me too. Okay, let's join the others. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for joining us today.
[05:09] Jeff Skopek: Thanks for having me, Kim.
[05:10] Kim Krawiec: Well, why don't we start by having you introduce yourself to our listeners?
[05:15] Jeff Skopek: Thanks. My name is Jeff Skopat, and I am a professor of law at the University of Cambridge. My research here focuses on issues of the law and ethics and medicine and the life sciences, as well as animal rights.
[05:28] Kim Krawiec: And you're Here to talk to us today about this super interesting paper created to be killed. And we just wanted to start by getting you to give us some background on the paper, sort of what, what your inspiration was for the paper. This is a draft, right? It's not published yet, if I understand that. And so I'm interested in who the target audience is, you know, where you want to publish it, what your plans are for the paper, that type of thing.
[05:54] Jeff Skopek: Sure, Great, thanks. So I've been, yeah, I've been interested just to get to the origin of the project. I've been interested in animal rights really since I was in high school when I first started to learn and think about how humans treat animals. I eventually became a vegetarian and then vegan in my junior year of high school, way back in 1995, 96, which I guess is 30 years ago, somehow I went off to college, started studying the philosophical foundations of our obligations to animals and to other non human entities. And since then my thinking on various questions has evolved significantly. So in some areas, sort of evolved, led to a solidification of certain views. So for example, my view that animals have rights such that it's generally wrong to kill them, to make them suffer, to treat them as mere means to human ends, et cetera. But in other areas I found that hard questions actually emerge. So the, the more you dig in, you start to realize that some things aren't as clear as you might have thought they were. So this project tackles one of those questions. The question arises from the claim, sort of, in short, that eating cows is good for them. That's like the simplistic version, the idea being that when you, if you give a cow or other animal a good enough life and if the animal wouldn't otherwise live, but for the fact that you've created them for the purpose of say, killing them, that the practice of raising and killing them is actually good for them. So that's one sort of bucket of challenges doesn't just arise with respect to animals that are raised for food. It arises any time that an animal is brought into existence and given a life that is perhaps not great in some way, but, but, but, but better than not living. The question is, well, have you done anything wrong by, by, by engaging in that practice? So, yeah, this is, you know, one set of, I think, questions that I still puzzle about or when I started on this project, it was one area where I thought that I didn't yet have a really clear answer.
[08:06] Kim Krawiec: Great, thanks so much. Well, we are going to get into more details about all of These issues. And we are going to start by. I'm going to turn it over to Mason. He basically runs the show from here.
[08:18] Jeff Skopek: Great.
[08:18] Mason Marche: Well, well, thank you so much again, Jeff, for being here. I guess I'll kick it off by asking you open this piece by clarifying that the focus is on animals that are created and killed specifically for eating them. But I'm wondering about the implications for animals that are created in a manner that just provides them suboptimal happiness, but doesn't have like a set end of life date. And in saying that, I'm thinking like animals that are bred for particular aesthetic value, but that imparts some sort of lasting and lifelong health implication. So think French bulldogs that have notorious breeding issues that often require like pretty invasive surgery just to get them to be able to breathe. Like they maybe wouldn't have if we hadn't bred them in that way.
[09:03] Jeff Skopek: Thanks very much. So, yeah, this is actually a hard case and it's actually the case that I thought that I was originally dealing with when I, when I set out on this project. So the type of problem you've identified is what, what in the literature sometimes referred to as the non identity problem. And so the non identity problem arises with respect to individuals that could be animals, could be people on which we confer lives that are good overall, but that they have some inherent flaw, and that lives that cannot be created without that flaw, so that the only alternative is to confer a life on a different individual, I. E. One that's non identical or no individual at all. And so in that type of case, the decision to confer the life with the unavoidable flaw, it seems, cannot be said to harm that individual, as the good that we confer along with the existence essentially counterbalances the limited bad that comes from the flaw. And so they're not harmed overall, but rather benefited by the act of. So I think that your existence, your, your example of, of the pug seems to fall quite neatly into that category because it seems that for the pug, the alternative would be to have no pugs at all. And you, you might say that we, we shouldn't create pugs for that reason, but spelling out why that's good, it turns out, is harder than it seems precisely for the same the reason that I just noted. So philosophers have actually been grappling with this problem for a long time, trying to find a way to spell out our intuition that acts like this are harmful and, or wrongful. And originally when I started on this, this project about cows, I mean I'm all about, you know, cows, livestock, animals that are raised to be killed for food and, or research. I was thinking that it was the same type of problem because the rationale is similar. Essentially it says, well, cow, the alternative for you is non existent, so as long as you have a good enough life, you have nothing to complain about, essentially. Which is sort of the argument that would be given with respect to the pug. But as I try to show on the paper, actually what I came to realize was that the two different problems can be teased apart and such that with cases where the actual that you're doing is an act that occurs when the animal or entity is alive, we can still object to that act, even if we can't object to the act of creating it, or at least if it's harder to articulate what exactly is wrong there. So yeah, and that was one thing that I hope to achieve in the paper is to show that although these, these cases like the PUG and things like this look similar to things like livestock, that actually they can be differentiated. Perfect.
[12:09] Mason Marche: Well, thank you so much. Kind of continuing on this trend of talking about the scope and the outer bounds of some of this philosophy. I'd love to turn it over to my colleague Cindy.
[12:17] Speaker D: Hi Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. I was wondering at the beginning of your article, you note that your analysis applies equally to animals used in biomedical research. In research, the harm and benefit are tightly linked as animals are often created and killed at a specific stage or after developing a desired trait. So given that research is aimed at human survival rather than enjoyment, does this make the justification for killing the animal stronger or weaker than in food production?
[12:52] Jeff Skopek: Thanks. That question, I think, I think brings up maybe two issues that I would differentiate. So one question about is about whether the practice is justified on the ground that it is good for the animal in the sense of its existence, is inherently flawed and wouldn't otherwise exist. And then the second being the question about whether it's justified on the basis of the, the benefit conferred on humans. And I think that those are sort of two different modes of justification that you might see with animal research. And my project is really concerned with the former question, which is whether or not, you know, you can justify animal research on the grounds like you might for say, livestock, that the alternative for the, the, the, the mouse and being used in research isn't a happy life somewhere else, it's rather non existent. So as long as the animal's given a good enough life, the practice of raising it for use in Research can be justified on those grounds as opposed to saying, yes, we're harming the animal, but that harm is justified by a benefit conferred on humans. So yeah, I would differentiate those two. And just to focus on the first one, I would say that, you know, my, my argument doesn't just apply to killing, which I think that was part of your question was whether it extends beyond killing. And it certainly does. It would apply to anything that's done to the animal in the context of research that's arguably harmful. And I would say that just like the attempt to justify the killing on the grounds that, well, if, if I wasn't going to kill you, I wouldn't have created you, you can't likewise use that line of justification for harming an animal in research. You can't say, well, the alternative was nonexistent, so this doesn't count as a harm, I've actually benefited you. So yes, the argument applies beyond killing, but yes, it doesn't get into the question of, you know, when we're actually talking about justifying a harm to animals based on the benefit that would be conferred on humans. Yeah, that's sort of outside the scope of this project. But it is also another set of hard questions, probably even harder I would say, but I didn't try to tackle them here.
[15:20] Mason Marche: Okay, let's turn it really quickly over to Bradley to dive into that even a little bit deeper.
[15:26] Jeff Skopek: Hi, thank you so much for being with us today. So like Mason said, this is kind of a similar question, but I am curious to understand, I guess, how the reasoning from your paper would apply to more modern innovations. So like genetically engineered animals that are created solely for the benefit of humans or even so much as like lab grown meat. I suppose I'm wondering if you think that your ideas could, or even like should be extended to those particular settings as well. So I think that lab grown meat, yes, is, is, is an interesting one and I might actually perhaps expand beyond, beyond lab grown meat because I think that one other hard set of questions that I bracket in this paper, but the lab grown meat hints at perhaps is the question of intentionally creating animals who lack the capacity, for example, to feel pain. So what if, for example, you could create either a mouse for use in research or a chicken for consumption that lacks the ability to feel pain, that it lacks, perhaps even more extremely, doesn't have any subjective experience at all. What if anything, would be wrong with doing that? And these are then also very clear cases of the, the non identity problem that I was just talking about a minute ago because the idea here would be that you've like, the flaw is basically intimately connected with the animal's existence. You couldn't really have the animal without. If you were to not do that, you'd be talking about having a different animal altogether. And so here, the solution to the non identity problem that I develop in this paper doesn't provide a solution. And that's actually why this is a sort of a third part of the project. One thing I didn't say at the beginning, I realized is that this paper, this project is part of a set of three questions. So as I said at the beginning, there's some questions that I've found sort of emerge and become more troubling the more you think about them. So the first category is animals that have been, as I say in this title, this paper created killed. Second set of questions that still trouble me or that I still don't think I have a great answer to is the question of suffering in the wild. So for example, and I think maybe we'll actually come. I think I have a question perhaps one of you might want to ask about suffering in the wild.
[18:18] Kim Krawiec: I think Gabe has that question coming up.
[18:20] Jeff Skopek: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed that there's a interest in carnivorous. Carnivorous animals. And then thirdly, yes, animals that have been disenhanced. So I think that yes, the, if, if something is wrong with disenhancing animals, it's going to be hard to explain in terms of sort of the most standard accounts of why animals have moral status. Because the idea is that you're taking away the basis of why they have moral status and they're doing that before they even exist. So explaining what's wrong with that will be, need to be grounded in some alternative account of what makes the act wrongful, even if it doesn't harm the animal. And these types of questions about whether or not you can wrong somebody without harming them also potentially arise with respect to, you know, the animals that we've been talking about in these other categories like created to be killed. Another way of explaining the problem or explaining what's, what's. What's bad about creating animals to be killed is that you're wronging them even if you haven't harmed them. But I've tried to show that actually I think the case of like the cows is actually is quite straightforward to explain. So the puzzles are not as, don't run as deep as I originally worried they might.
[19:40] Kim Krawiec: Jeff, can I just ask you, and if this takes us too far off topic by the way we can just cut this out because I always struggle with the non identity problem and I think I'm not alone in that. But it occurred to me as you were talking about this particular example of sort of genetically engineering say mice to not feel pain. Right. And so on the one hand, like if it's a given that we're going to experiment on mice in ways that might be painful to them, then that sounds like engineering them to not feel pain might not only be justified, but like we would have a duty to do that. Right. But barring that. Right. If we didn't live in a world where we were going to inflict pain on mice, it's, it feels, it seems wrong to me that we would create them to not feel pain. And I don't know why I feel that. Right. Is it just one of those things where my instincts are wrong? I mean, I just can't. To me, the non identity problem just doesn't help me get past that. And maybe I'm thinking of it wrong.
[20:45] Jeff Skopek: No, well, I think you're right on that. In the, the, the, the, the non identity problem, the types of cases that arise in, in this category often look like they are things that are very wrong to do. I mean you can use this logic to identify doing very bad things to, to humans, conferring very flawed lives on, on humans. The same. Right. Same logic applies. It doesn't only apply to cows and to mice.
[21:15] Kim Krawiec: I think that's been my problem with this all along. Right.
[21:19] Jeff Skopek: No, and that's why I said that philosophers have puzzled over it. And yes, people have come up with different ways to explain the intuition that these things are wrong. Right. So we have these, you have your example of say, well, the disenhanced mouse or maybe it's a disenhanced human and we intuitively most people, I think certainly with the case of a disenhanced human would think that you've done something terribly wrong. But the question is to try to articulate what exactly it is. So what account of harm can make sense of that intuition? What account of wronging maybe you can wrong without harming can make sense of that intuition. And yeah, developing some principled account that we can live with more generally. And yeah, so far I think a lot of people who work on the topic would say that there isn't yet sort of a winning solution. You know, with, with the case of the, the mice. It could be one possibility could be grounded in say virtue ethics. I mean you might think that it's just a, not a Good way to be a person when confronted with a moral obligation rather than changing how you changing the world so that you can continue to behave in the way that was otherwise a bad way of behaving. I mean, to me that seems like a possibility. I mean, it's one thing that I want to explore more when I get to that part of the project, how that idea might be fleshed out. But intuitively I think that when you see somebody who rather than changing what they do, says, oh no, I'll just change the world so that I don't have to change what I do, I would say, well, I don't know that that's really complying with moral obligation in the way that a good person would do. So yeah, thank you. But Kim, you're right on thinking that yes, these cases are puzzling and hard to explain what exactly articulated because as you'll note, like the explanation I gave, grounded in study, virtue ethics is contrary to, I mean most contemporary, you know, rights based discourse would not look to virtue ethics to explain the wrongfulness of behavior.
[23:39] Kim Krawiec: Thank you.
[23:39] Mason Marche: Yeah, actually I think that was a really great follow up because I think this discussion of harm reduction and cognition dovetails really beautifully into the next portion of our episode, which I think I'll kick off with a question by Rachel.
[23:51] Speaker D: Hi Jeff, thanks so much for being with us today. Um, so in your article you explicitly set aside the question of whether painless killing harms animals because of their cognitive capacities. But on the other hand, in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, his outrage is primarily directed toward the widespread suffering in factory farms, including their cognizance of the suffering and killing of their fellow animals. So why did you find this question to be more interesting or urgent?
[24:19] Jeff Skopek: So I found it to be more interesting, but not more urgent. So clearly the treatment of animals on factory farms is a far more urgent problem. However, I found it to be, it's a less interesting problem for me because I think that the answer is very clear. I have no question about whether factory farming is impermissible. I think it's, it's just clearly not so. Like I said sort of when I, when I gave these, the introductory remarks, you know, I became vegan 30 years ago and that is something that I hasn't changed. Probably my articulation and the way in which I would ground the decision is, has evolved. But to me that's a fairly straightforward question. And yes, it's clearly a far more urgent problem because the type of question I'm engaged in this paper is really more of a Theoretical question insofar as very, very few, if any animals are given the types of lives they would need to be given in order for this way of justifying eating them to get off the ground. So this idea that, oh, eating cows is good for them, it assumes like an idealized world that I don't know whether certainly not the case and questions of whether or not you really could, on any scale, produce animals in this way. Um, so yes, setting that aside though, I then wanted to grapple with the, the deeper philosophical question because even though it might not make a huge difference for practice today, I think that it's good to get clear on first principles and to have solid answers. So, you know, if somebody says, well, what if. What if X, I want to know the answer to that. If, if only because. Helps you perhaps clarify other important beliefs and assumptions that you might have. But thanks for bringing up. That is a very important point that can get lost, I think perhaps when one dives sort of deep into a nuanced philosophical debate to lose sight of the fact that, yes, animals are being treated in really horrific ways that Peter Singer and others drew our attention to. Great.
[26:41] Mason Marche: Well, thank you. I think keeping in this thread of the human element of killing in some of these scenarios, I'd love to turn it over to Gabe. Hey, thank you so much for being here.
[26:52] Jeff Skopek: So, yeah, as you alluded to it before, my question is more about how many people justify the killing of animals for food because they say it's just.
[27:01] Mason Marche: A part of human nature and that we've always hunted to survive and animals hunt to survive.
[27:05] Jeff Skopek: Would some of your arguments apply with equal force to animals that we have not created to kill for food, such as in hunting, or would they be limited to animals that humans create just in order to kill? So, yeah, I'm setting aside things like, like hunting precisely because there the. The line of justification doesn't attempt to, to pin the justification on, on the benefit, which is what I found to be interesting hard about. This other line of justification is essentially that it's not saying, oh, we're justifying this because what we're doing is really important. We're not justifying it based on, you know, discounting your moral status. We're justifying it based on the grounds that we're saying that's actually good for you. And that's what I found to be the. Yeah, like the hard question. So, yes, things like hunting would then be outside this, the scope.
[28:05] Kim Krawiec: You know, Jeff, I, for whatever reason, that just clarified this takeaway point of your paper In a way that I really needed. Like, I don't know why. I. I'm just saying that's a great distillation of what. What motivated you here in a way that perhaps I lost sight of as I tried to dig into each argument and try to understand each element of the argument. And so I appreciate you. It's like sort of bringing that strand back in. It's really helpful.
[28:34] Jeff Skopek: Thanks. Yeah. I probably should introduce. Yeah, that's one of the things that you can actually lose track of as an author. You know, making sure that the audience knows what's at stake and how you got interested in it. Because once you start writing, you know what was at stake and why you got interested in the topic, but you sometimes forget to let the reader know. So thanks. I'll definitely.
[28:54] Kim Krawiec: Well, you probably. You probably do. You do say that. But for whatever reason, as I was trying to fully understand each other of the arguments, I lost sight of it a little bit. And Des, now when you said it, I'm like, oh, of course.
[29:06] Speaker D: Right.
[29:07] Kim Krawiec: This is. This is addressed to the argument that this is good for them that we're doing this. Right. Like, I mean, so for whatever reason, that helped me a lot.
[29:15] Jeff Skopek: Thanks. Yeah. Because it is. It's a really. I mean, it's. On one hand, at first glance, I thought it was a very strange argument to make. Like a clearly wrong argument to make that it was good for them, but. Well, let's clearly. Wrong. But what. As I was saying, this is one of the types of questions that when you start to dig into it, you realize, oh, no, it's actually not quite so clear as I thought. I thought it was obviously not good for them. And it turns out that to explain why it's not good for them actually requires quite a lot of unpacking. Yeah.
[29:45] Kim Krawiec: Yeah. Thank you. That's. That's super helpful.
[29:48] Jeff Skopek: Great.
[29:49] Mason Marche: Yeah. And I mean, almost. As a really, really perfect follow up, we have another great question from. From Rachel.
[29:54] Speaker D: Hi, thanks for being with us today. One important strand in your article is about the conceptions of morality. Do you think morality is a uniquely human trait? Does this mean that animal carnivorism cannot raise moral questions in the same way as human carnivorism, even absent factory farming and other uniquely human practices?
[30:10] Jeff Skopek: Thanks. It's a great, great question and it actually raises some issues that go beyond the scope of my competence because Red is going to really touch on questions about animal minds, which is obviously entire field of research. But what it does allow me to, I think, highlight is that maybe Draw or divide the question up a little bit. So, right, there's going to be the empirical question about whether, as you said, animal carnivorism can raise moral questions with respect to the animals doing the eating, I guess. And the question would be whether or not you'd say a lion can wrong a zebra by eating it is one question. And for that we would need to know a lot more about animals. I think that probably for higher order chimps and things like this, I think research suggests that they do have conceptions of morality or these social norms. There's, you know, so you could imagine that there would be moral systems that would potentially apply to them. Although figuring out what those would be is again, something that I might not be able to offer that much insight into. But I will just take the opportunity to highlight that the other aspect of your question about whether or not animal carnivorism raises moral questions really gets to the question of whether it raises moral questions about our duties. So sort of setting aside the question of whether a chimp has a duty to a fellow chimp or a lion has a duty to a zebra, et cetera. So that category of moral obligations, there's the further question about does the existence of predation in the wild give rise to human obligations with respect to, to the suffering caused in the wild? And that coincidentally is, yes, briefly hinted at the second sort of part of this, this project. So this project has like, yeah, three parts. There's the created to be killed and there's sort of suffering in the wild and then disenhanced animals. So suffering in the wild once again, I think is much harder than it looks like to fully defend what I think some of my own intuitions are. So intuitively I would say that when suffering happens that we shouldn't probably intervene to stop lions from eating gazelles, for example. But the question is why, if we could do it without causing ecological disruption, so if we could solve all the practical problems and we could get the lion to eat tofu instead, wouldn't that be better? And intuitively I would say no. And my intuition is that that wouldn't be better. But explaining why is once again a bit harder than it seems. Because if you think, as I do, that animal suffering counts, why doesn't the suffering of the, say, gazelle count or the zebra cow when it's being eaten, Even if we don't have a moral obligation to intervene, which I think is pretty easy to argue that we don't have obligations to intervene, explaining why it wouldn't be good thing to intervene, all else being equal, is a bit harder. And so that is, yeah, once, as I was saying, I think another sort of, for me, an area where I still need to do some more thinking to really either figure out whether my intuition is wrong or whether it's right. And I just need to figure out why. So that's part of the journey is, like I said at the start, some things have become clearer and clearer and more well grounded as years go by, and other things you realize, oh, I need to do a bit more thinking about that. Great.
[34:09] Mason Marche: Well, thank you so much. At this point, I'd really love to touch a little bit more on the conceptions of species and groups that you talk about in the paper. And I'd love to turn it over to Buddy to kick us off there.
[34:21] Jeff Skopek: Yeah, I really, I really appreciate your analysis of group rights and that use of Peter French's language, but it really forced me to ask myself, if we have a solid enough scientific understanding of every species to determine that there are all these aggregate groups, especially for those like, more complex, intelligent species of animals, is it possible that we don't have all the facilities to understand those complex social frameworks that they might have? So that distinction between conglomerate and aggregate could be a little basic or a little harder to understand for us. Thanks for bringing up an area that I had to learn a little bit about when I was working on this project. So just maybe to give the readers the broader frame of the question, the question arises from part of the paper where I'm grappling with the question of whether or not it's good for the species, whether eating cows is, for example, good for the species of cow rather than good for the individual animals. So as I was saying earlier, one of the things that I did when I started looking at this good for claim, eating cows is good for them. You know what? Who is the them? Is it eating cows is good for the species cow? And that's one claim people make. And whereas earlier in the session today we were focusing on another question, another question, which is is it good for the individual cow who is eaten? So, yeah, moving now from the individual cow to the species cow, one question is whether anything is good for species, whether species are the type of thing for which things can be good or bad. And as Buddy's comment or question highlights, I ultimately argue that they're not. They lack the type of coherence that allows us to make sense of the idea that something can be good for the species, even if it's not good for the Individual. This is something that Michael Pollan writes about in response to Peter Singer saying, oh, well, clearly groups can have interests and rights that are different from the interests and rights of the individual members. And so clearly then species can be groups, just like, say, political organizations. Right. So we all understand and can make sense of the idea that a political group can have interests of its own, or at least, I mean, it's not a totally uncontroversial statement, but it's somewhat easy to theorize, make sense of why or how that might be the case. And so my question was whether species could potentially be a group like that. And as I was pointing out, I think that they are really just sort of. They're just categories imposed on the world. But buddy, what you do highlight is that there could be some animals within a species that actually do form complex social frameworks, making them cohere and operate in the way that maybe a political organization of humans might. So I think, yeah, it's. You're spot on in pointing out that that's possible. But I guess for my purpose, it doesn't allow for the justification of the claim that eating them is good for them because at whatever level, you know, you, you, you frame the conglomerate, it's not going to be at the species level. So that the species is not sort of altogether forming a group that would then have its own interests at, you know, the sort of. The most that's really conceivable is that a group of individuals within a species might form a group that has its own interests. But once again, then that doesn't allow you. The sort of. The force of the claim relies like the claim that Paul Mike Pollan, in sort of popular writing and that some other philosophers, more academic writing have made is this idea that the species itself has some status such that, you know, that the eating cows isn't good for the individual cow who's eaten, but it's good for the species. That's where, that's where the problem is.
[38:35] Mason Marche: Perfect, I think. Exactly. Touching on that point about whether or not something can be good for the individual, the species, we have a question from Reid.
[38:42] Jeff Skopek: Hi, Jeff. In your article you note the indeterminacy of species distinctions. And I'm wondering whether that line of argument has implications for humans as well as animals. For instance, you argue that there is no principled difference between sacrificing a given animal for the sake of one species versus another. Does this mean that any preference humans may have for members of their own species is unjustifiable? Speciesism that Singer described. Thanks very much. So Singer, when he talks about speciesism, is highlighting the problem of giving priority to an individual merely on the grounds that they're a member of a species. Species, rather than on the basis of any characteristics that that individual has. So he highlights that, you know, saying that just because somebody is a member of group X cannot itself provide a justification for treating them in one. One way or the other. Just as we wouldn't say because you're a man, you get a certain level of treatment different from women. You can't say that just because you're a member of a species, you get different treatment. You need to identify something, it is something about the members of that group that's morally relevant, and then treat all entities with those characteristics equal or give equal consideration of interests. And so that is a slightly different question than the one that I was trying to highlight, which was that when someone argues that we can kill a cow and we can justify the killing of the cow because it's good for the species cow, I tried to highlight that from the point of the cow being killed, it doesn't really matter if you're killing it for the sake of cows or for the sake of another species, because a cow doesn't have an interest in the existence of its species. It has an interest in its own existence. Insofar as its own existence entails the existence of the species, then, yes, it indirectly has an interest in the species. But in and of itself, right, that's just an indirect interest. It really just cares if it cares about anything about itself or, you know, cares about its young and things like this. But, right, you can't aggregate out to the level of species. So I was trying to highlight the problem with this line of justification, which is essentially that, yes, to say that you're. You're killing the cow for the good of cows doesn't really shouldn't and wouldn't really be compelling with respect to the interests of the individual.
[41:24] Kim Krawiec: So, Jeff, am I, if I'm understanding your answer correctly, it's that if we. If I'm a person who accepts that it is wrong to kill animals for the sake of humans, I should also be persuaded that it is wrong to kill cows for the sake of cows. Is that. Is that the argument?
[41:45] Jeff Skopek: Well, it's a bit more. It's a bit more narrow than that. So, yeah, it's really just that a cow doesn't have an interest in the existence of cows per se, such that you can't say that it's good for you. This is Good for you, because the existence of cows is good for you. That, that logic doesn't work because the individual doesn't have an interest in the existence of the species. Maybe humans might have interest in the existence of the human species because it might be something that we care about.
[42:16] Kim Krawiec: I see. I understand. Okay, so you could probably ask a.
[42:20] Jeff Skopek: Lot of humans, do you have a preference for the human species to exist? We have a, a concept of the human species and we have a concept of what it would mean for the human species to not exist. And therefore we can make sense of the idea that. Okay, we're going to. Sorry, we're going to kill you, Jeff, but it's for the good of the species. And you actually care about the good of species. And I'd say, yeah, it's true, I do care about the good of the species. So the logic works. My point is that for cows, cows don't have, as far as we know, preferences for the existence of the species cow. They likely don't have the concept of species cow, or of species existence such that you can't use that line of justification for them, even if you might, for example, be able to use that. That line of justification with respect to humans.
[43:05] Kim Krawiec: Okay, I've got it. Thank you.
[43:07] Mason Marche: I'm really glad we're on the topic of what it means to be a species and what are the implications of this argument? So I think it's a great time to invite Catherine up.
[43:15] Speaker D: Thank you for being here with us. Jeff, you also argue that evolution from one species to another harms the original species. Does this imply that the experience of evolution or even growth is incompatible with having an interest in existence? And isn't the original species only eliminated because of how humans have decided to name and categorize species? Couldn't any original interests have also evolved with the evolution of a species? And could you elaborate on your stance here generally?
[43:43] Jeff Skopek: Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. And once again, maybe I should just set the stage for the readers who. Sorry, the listeners who have not been readers of the piece. And really, the argument that's coming up here is a bit in the paper where I'm exploring, once again, this idea that species have interests in their existence at the species level. And I was one of the. I mean, I tried to show that this is an implausible view in a variety of ways. One is by looking at the nature of group interests and what it would take for a species to have the type of characteristics that would allow it to have group interests. Another is to just Point out the kind of counterintuitive implications of this view. And that's. I think, Catherine, what you've highlighted is a point where I say, well, if it was really the case that species had an interest in their existence, how do you make sense of what happens when a species evolves into another species so that species A goes extinct and it becomes species B? B. Be odd to say that that that was not in the interest of the first species, that something bad has happened because it evolved. If anything, you might say that that was. If you could talk about things being good and bad for species, that would seem to be a contender for something that was good. At the end of the day, I don't think that there's anything that's good or bad for species. But insofar as one does think that there's things that are good and bad for species. And once again, to be clear, I'm talking about species independent of their, the interests of their individual members. So species as, as, as, as a group interest that you would be committed to saying that, that, that evolution was bad for species because it meant that they ceased to exist. And that seems highly counterintuitive to me that it would be a problem with the view if, if it was the view that existence was, was good for species, we'd be committed to the view that evolution was bad for them. That seems awesome. Great.
[45:47] Mason Marche: So we have one last question about species. I'd love to turn it to Denise.
[45:52] Speaker D: Hi Jeff, thank you so much for being here. My question is, in your paper you lay out the argument for species who have interest despite not having sentience. And in doing so you give some example of those species like plants and mountain ranges. And I think mountain ranges is more towards ecosystems. But anyway, modern research has shown that trees, which are of course a type of plant, can react to negative stimuli, communicate with each other and even share resources. So does this mean that our preconceived notions of sentience and the species or ecosystems that could have it might be mistaken or incomplete? And would this affect your arguments? Or do you find it largely relevant given that your position on interests is pretty agnostic of sentience?
[46:33] Jeff Skopek: Thanks for. Yeah, great kind of digging in on this bit of the paper that really explores the species version of the claim, which I originally thought was going to be very easy to dismiss. But once again I realized that it was raised more thorny questions than I thought. And I think what your question gets at is sort of, I end up adopting sort of a two prong approach to the question of you know, is this good for meat eating, good for cows? The species sort of. The first question is the one that we've thus far been talking about, which is that, like, do species have interests in existence at all independent of the interests of their members? And that's sort of like the first question where I devoted quite a bit of time to exploring the different ways in which you might make sense of that claim. And what I. What I ultimately think are the problems with each of them. But then I turn to the second sort of second level. The second question, I guess is, is, would species interests matter if they did have them? So, Right. So first is like, do they have them? I think the answer is no. But then I say, well, okay, let's say for the sake of argument that they did have them. Like, what would follow from that? Would that sort of justify this, this line of justification? Get off the ground? And there, as you highlight, I suggest that even if species had interests, like, for example, plants, so I think it's clear that plants have interests, interest in living, it's good for a plant to be watered and provided with sunlight. But as I think that the case of plants shows, we don't necessarily think that all interests count, morally speaking. So the mere fact that species have interests, if it were true, would not get you to the conclusion that eating meat is good for cows, because you would get to the second question of, well, whatever, these interests are the type of interests that count very much. And Daria pointed out the dissensions or the capacity for experience might be prerequisite for interests to count. So that the reason. Yes, I would accept the argument that plants have interests, but I would just say that I don't think that they count. Or if they do count, they don't count very much, at least not when weighed against other very concrete interests, like, for example, like the death and suffering of an individual animal. So, yeah, thanks for highlighting that. Kind of like the second prong of.
[49:05] Mason Marche: The argument, but at this point, I think we should turn it over to Sari.
[49:09] Speaker D: Hi, Geoff, thank you for joining us today. You argue that vegetarianism, whilst reducing harm in some ways, could result in fewer animals being brought into existence, paradoxically reducing the overall quantity of happy animals. How do you respond to the ethical dilemma that arises from this? If vegetarianism reduces harm by decreasing animal suffering, but also reduces the overall quantity of happy animals, is there a balance between these two outcomes or should we prioritize one over the other?
[49:41] Jeff Skopek: You have hit on what I think is. Yeah, one really hard question that I'm not sure that I've really fully bottomed out in, in this paper. And it arises from the way in which I have attempted to reject what's sometimes called the logic of the larder, this idea that getting back to the individual level claim that eating the, eating the animals is good for it or the practice of eating animals is good for it. And as I highlight in the paper, there's. So this claim raises two different questions. So first question is whether it's good to create, say happy animals. Is that like a good thing? And then if it is a good thing, then does the counterfactual matter, I. E. Does the fact that they wouldn't otherwise exist justify the killing? Right. And so so far we've actually sort of been talking about the second question, but I do think your question really highlights a feature of my response that arises to how I respond with the, to the first question. So on this idea of whether it's actually good to create, to confer, and we're talking theoretically a happy existence on say a cow, one standard response in the literature has been to just deny that that's the case and to just say, well, creating happy animals is not good for them because the alternative for them is non existent. And if you're non existent, you can benefit by being given a life because you are non existent, there's nobody on whom to confer the benefit of life. And so you can see why some people would say that this is one way of rejecting the line of justification which is just say this doesn't get off the ground because you have not even identified a benefit. Like the conferral of life is not a benefit that counts for anything. And so then you can't hold up that benefit to then later justify the killing. Because we would say one response to say, well, there's just no benefit there in the first place, so you can't use it when you get to the act of killing. And in my paper I actually end up not going down that route and I concede that it actually might confer a benefit. And this background is, is, is, is necessary to, to sort of answer your question because one slightly counterintuitive implication of the, this view is that it's actually being vegetarian is not really good for all of the animals who cease to come into existence that you might think, or I probably would have thought if you had asked me that by being vegan I was, I was benefiting and doing something good for all these animals who are not been created to be killed. But my argument suggests that, well no, maybe I've not really done anything good for them because I've just caused them to not exist. And maybe it would have actually been better for them to exist. So that's the bit that's counterintuitive. I then ultimately conclude, well, even though that's the case, being vegetarian or vegan is still good for them because when it comes time to killing, right, the killing is unjustifiable, and killing animals and engaging in practices that require their killing is still problematic. So essentially, when you asked whether there's a balance between these two outcomes, I would say that at the end of the day, what matters is not contributing to killing, killing, and therefore, when an animal has come into existence, not engaging in practices that will incentivize either mistreatment or the killing of it, and if those practices happen to result in a world in which there are, say, fewer cows, that is, you know, acceptable. I mean, cows have not been harmed by. From their failure to be brought into existence, whereas the cow that has been brought into existence is killed and who is killed is very clearly, clearly harmed by it. So, yes, it's a slight, slightly counterintuitive, or I don't know if I would say paradoxical, but a slightly surprising in any way implication of my analysis was it did just force me to sort of rethink what is. What is the good that I'm creating by choosing to be vegan.
[54:06] Mason Marche: Excellent. So we've got about five minutes left. I'd love to make sure we hear our last question from Kendall.
[54:11] Jeff Skopek: Hi.
[54:12] Speaker D: So when discussing the larder argument, you.
[54:14] Kim Krawiec: Mentioned that the vast majority of animals.
[54:16] Speaker D: Raised for food today do not meet the minimum conditions of a good life. And my understanding is that you reject the larder argument. Even under these ideal conditions, would it ever be possible, at least theoretically, for animals created to be killed to meet those conditions?
[54:29] Jeff Skopek: So I think there. Yeah, I do want to once again highlight that and the point that you have very clearly stated here, which is that, yes, most animals today don't meet the conditions. But. But, yes, my argument is that even under the ideal conditions where the animal is truly given a wonderful life, that you can't justify its killing merely on the grounds that you've given it a wonderful life. You know, that, that it's. The logic is flawed. It's not. So, yes, even if empirically right, we could do it. The line of justification just doesn't work for some of the reasons that I've been talking about today and that I get into in more detail in the paper.
[55:14] Kim Krawiec: Thank you. So much. Jeff, this has been really fun. Do you want to leave the listeners with any closing thoughts? You don't have to.
[55:21] Jeff Skopek: Yeah, no, I was just thinking that the last question maybe is. I was just thinking that maybe that's actually kind of a good end point because it gets back to the, I mean, one point that I want to make sure is not lost, which is that I'm, I'm not saying that, that what happens, you know, because I, I. One response I've gotten to this paper is that, well, animals are clearly not treated this way. What are you talking about? And.
[55:45] Kim Krawiec: Oh, that's interesting. No, so I, that part. I thought we all, we all understood that you, you both thought that they were not treated this way and that even if they were, it would still not make it okay. Right?
[55:58] Jeff Skopek: I mean, like. Yeah, no, no, I'm sure that, that everybody in this group got that point, but so sometimes I think that it. Kendyl's question sort of teed up like, just like a, kind of a reinforcement of that point. So maybe it's actually like a good way to end on something.
[56:15] Kim Krawiec: Yeah, I agree. Thank you, Kendyl, for doing that. Mason, any last thoughts from you?
[56:20] Mason Marche: You know, thank you so much for being here, Jeff. I thought this was a really great paper for us to read as a class, and I'm excited for our listeners to be able to read this and the other two papers you just mentioned when they fully publish.
[56:33] Jeff Skopek: Thanks. Yeah, no, thank you, guys. It was a really great set of questions I had. When Kim sent them over to me, I was just going through, and I was like, oh, these are some good, good, hard questions. So I really enjoyed the opportunity to, to think about them and, and speak with you about them and also just to, yeah, hear, hear your thoughts and, and have you spend time thinking about something that, yeah, as I said, I've been thinking about for a very long time. One thing I didn't say is that this actually, I even had a course that I taught at hls, of which this was a part. So each week we looked at, there was four environmental entities that posed challenging questions for animal entities, for human entities. And so that's. That was. It was actually when I was creating that course that I sat down to think, oh, what are the really hard questions? And, and these are some that I came up with. This was back when I was a postdoc at HLS and sort of been wanting to get it in writing ever since, but there's never enough time to do all the writing you want. So Anyway, it's really nice just to kind of be getting it out there, even if indirectly in the form of a podcast. The paper's not yet done, and it could end up being a book if I originally pitched it as a book. Each puzzle, three challenges for animal rights, cows, zebras, and featherless chickens. And so each bit was going to be one of these different categories. So, anyway, I'm glad for all of the opportunity that you guys have all provided via your questions and Kim via the invitation, so.
[57:58] Kim Krawiec: Well, thank you. We really enjoyed having you.
