EA - The Case for Animal-Inclusive Longtermism by BrownHairedEevee

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Case for Animal-Inclusive Longtermism, published by BrownHairedEevee on February 21, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.In: Journal of Moral PhilosophyAuthor: Gary David O'BrienOnline Publication Date: 19 Jan 2024License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalAbstractLongtermism is the view that positively influencing the long-term future is one of the key moral priorities of our time. Longtermists generally focus on humans, and neglect animals. This is a mistake. In this paper I will show that the basic argument for longtermism applies to animals at least as well as it does to humans, and that the reasons longtermists have given for ignoring animals do not withstand scrutiny.Because of their numbers, their capacity for suffering, and our ability to influence their futures, animals ought to be a central concern of longtermists. Furthermore, I will suggest that longtermism is a fruitful framework for thinking about the wellbeing of animals, as it helps us to identify actions we can take now that have a reasonable chance of improving the wellbeing of animals over the very long term.Keywords: longtermism; animal ethics; wild animal sufferingIntroductionLongtermism is the view that positively influencing the long-term future is one of the key moral priorities of our time.1 Since the future has the potential to be truly vast, both in duration and the number of individuals who will ever live, it is plausible that the long-term future might be extremely valuable, or extremely disvaluable.If we care about impartially doing good, then we should be especially concerned to ensure that the long-term future goes well, assuming that it is within our power to do so. Most longtermists focus on humans, and largely ignore animals. This is a mistake. In this paper I will show that the basic argument for longtermism applies to animals at least as well as it does to humans, and that the reasons longtermists have given for ignoring animals do not stand up to scrutiny.I will argue that, because of their numbers, their capacity for suffering, and our ability to influence their futures, animals ought to be a central concern of longtermists. Furthermore, I will suggest that longtermism is a fruitful framework for thinking about the wellbeing of animals, as it helps us to identify effective actions that we can take in the near future that have a reasonable chance of improving the wellbeing of animals over the very long term.In Section 1 I will lay out the basic argument for longtermism and consider some of the reasons why longtermists have neglected animals. In Sections 2 and 3 I will show that the basic argument for longtermism applies to animals and that we can use the longtermist framework to identify interventions that have a reasonable chance of making the long-term future go better for animals.More specifically, I will argue that (1) now or in the near-term future humans can act in ways that will predictably increase or decrease the scale and duration of wild animal suffering in the long term and (2) we are in an especially influential time for locking in values that can be expected to be good or bad for domesticated animals in the long term.Finally in Section 4 I will suggest some longtermist interventions for animals that might be more effective than short-term alternatives and will suggest areas for further research.For simplicity, I will assume a hedonistic theory of animal wellbeing, though nothing I say will be incompatible with the view that there are also important non-hedonic elements related to animal wellbeing. I will assume that all vertebrates have the capacity for sentience, and hence for positive and negative welfare.Although I will not have space to argue for this, I will assume the increasingly accepted view that the majority of animals in ...