Maximizing Moral Virtue

[The Grand Nudger]

First, let me say good job circling all of this back to the OP.

Let me be clear about my position.  It isn't so much that abortion is right or wrong, or killing animals.  It's that where there's inconsistency in approach, but still an attempt to rationalize, then there's likely a cover-up for an emotional position-- and we either accept that morality is a mediated moral position, or do the work of cleaning up the rationale.  It's going to be very hard to "maximize moral virtue" if you can't be very clear about what the moral impulse is and why it should guide behaviors.

For example, if someone says they're "pro-life," but is not vegetarian, then what they really mean is pro-human-life.  Then, in my opinion, they'd better have a really good rationale for why human life is sacrosanct, but not animal life.  The REAL answer, in my view, is that they're mostly Christians, and while they employ logicish-sounding langauge, the real motive is the expression of a pseudo-Biblical human exceptionalism-- "A baby is a precious gift from god, and killing such is abhorrent to all that is good in humanity."

Even worse, in America, is that many are pro-life right UP TO the moment where an actual human is born and begins living its life.  They will deny state-funded daycare, welfare for single moms, extra funding for special education in the case of babies born with defects due to drug or alchohol use, and so on.  But then, when some kid gets shot in the chest and is in a coma, they'll probably try to force the hospital not to pull the plug because. . .  super-sciency reasons.  That idea, that life is all about breath and a pulse, and not about actually living, seems very strange to me.

Or, if you take a stand against science in general-- for example, by demanding the inclusion of a Biblical view of reality in classrooms, but are very concerned about a "unique genetic makeup" at conception-- bruh where's the cherry-picking coming from?  If you're pro-science, you need to consider what science says about spontaneous abortions or miscarriages, about the development of the nervous system, and so on.  But they don't.

Some monks of various traiditons DO, as Belacqua mentioned, have an absolute pro-life position.  They wear masks to avoid inhaling and kiling bugs, they look down constantly to avoid accidentally killing anything, and so on.  I, on the other hand, will mercilessly murder any mosquito that enters my house.  I won't eat a hamburger, but I will most definitely slap a mosquito.  If I claim that animal death and suffering is intrinsically abhorrent, then Lucy, I have some 'splaining to do.

It turns out that many vegetarians are guilty of the "squeeee" reponse, and are no better than Christians in that regard.  Kill a baby seal?  Life in prison for you, if I can arrange it!  Kill a spider that's just chillin' in the corner?  Eeeeeek--- where's a man when you need one?

Maximizing moral virtue?  What does it mean?  So long as "moral virtue" is a collection of doubletalk to cover for the "Squeee" response, the moral topology is going to be strange and largely incoherent.

That would be a noncognitivist morality.  Ironically, we're all already maximizing our moral virtue if that's the case.  In that we're all being as squeee as we can be.  I suppose there's a little room to be "more of ourselves" - but..negligible, imo.

I think that animal death and suffering is intrinsically abhorrent - I'd probably just say that suffering is an item of inherent moral import.  Wherever you find suffering - there are moral questions to answer, moral puzzles to solve.  That's a big part of why I got into ag.  A 5% increase in fcr in a tilapia line accounts for right around 10k fewer fish per 5kft2 facility per year.  Over 30 years, that's alot of potential sufferers you don't have to chill, sedate, stun, and kill.  There's no particular reason that production egg rates can't be bred into a sex linked dual purpose free range heritage bird.  More resistant varieties of crops means less pesticide.  More productive means less fertilizer.  Then there's alternate use for bio-remedition byproducts. Niche operations like this reduce homelessness, unemployment, and foreclosure rates....while raising property values.  It all means less hunger. Maximizing this moral virtue -a presence for living- is marketable.  

Whole lotta killing between steps 1 and profit - monetarily or morally, ofc.  So, it doesn't seem like we have to refer to squee even if squee is a definite thing that some of us feel about some things. I doubt the notion would have ever crossed my mind if I didn't feel some sort of way about suffering. Allllll that said, we had a rule out at the csa. I don't give tours to vegans or nuts. Just doesn't work. For me, minimizing suffering is, itself, inherent to maximizing moral virtue. It means that there are all sorts of things I feel all sorts of ways about (and other people feel all sorts of ways about) that I think are a part of minimizing suffering. If that means pumping some fossil fuels, or leaning on a heavily processed input, or death - that's what I'm gonna do, despite the fact that I feel anti-squeee about those things.

In general, I think that alot of the time it's information asymmetry and exclusively suboptimal decision fields - rather than incoherence or inconsistency. You can fix one, but there isn't much to do about the other. You can explain to someone how a well managed closed loop amounts to less suffering - how it strictly controls it's suffering. In the end, though, you're only explaining these things because that suffering is an item of moral import that can't be separated from production and that does influence a consumer decisions. I would not have done things this way - made so much of life dependent on the death and suffering of other life - but that is the field of play.