Is not caring about wild-animal suffering speciesist?

Two terms to define here first:

Wild-animal suffering is the idea that animals in the wild experience some amount of suffering naturally, e.g. from parasites, exposure, hunger, being killed slowly by predators, etc. Some argue that the life of an average wild-animal (especially when you consider marine animals and insects) is so full of suffering that they experience more suffering than wellbeing. This might lead to the conclusion that their lives are not worth living, and would be better off not being born, so to speak. (Note this doesn’t automatically mean we should kill all predator animals, as some strawman makers of this would argue)

Speciesism I’ll leave to Peter Singer to define (from his book Animal Liberation): “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species”. It is a similar idea to racism, sexism, or any other ‘ism’.

Many argue (and I’d agree) that causing harm to animals for small amounts of human pleasure (such as eating their flesh or secretions) is speciesist. I prefer the utilitarian framework, but I concede that this is speciesist as much as the mistreatment of other races would be racist.

I’ve seen recently some people argue that thinking we have the right to intervene in the lives of wild animals in any way to try and alleviate suffering is speciesist. I argue here the opposite.

When a human is intentionally harmed by another human, we naturally think that this is bad. Most people also believe that a human intentionally harming a non-human is bad (though some will exempt certain animals from this care!). When a human suffers through some natural cause, e.g. exposure, hunger, disease, we tend to also think this is bad, and will do our best to help them. Why should we think that the same suffering, experienced by a wild animal, is not bad, or that we shouldn’t also try to prevent it?

Suffering is bad regardless of the cause, as the individual experiencing the suffering doesn’t intrinsically care where the suffering came from. And so I argue that caring about natural human suffering but not natural non-human suffering is speciesist.

Alternate explanations for conspiracies

This is a cautionary tale of understanding the existence of alternate explanations.

I’ve seen this image floating around with the caption of something like: “That blue book is called ‘How to lie with statistics’. And you trust this man?” Implying I suppose that he wants to kill us all with vaccines after all.

Image result for bill gates how to lie with statistics

I was intrigued so I looked up what the book was about. It turns out to not be aimed at teaching people how to misuse statistics, but rather about how others can misuse statistics to caution readers of statistics and infographics etc. to be wary of people misusing or manipulating statistics (ironically, some conspiracy theorists might actually benefit from reading the book). I wonder if a single person actually looked up the books’ contents, or if they saw the title and were happily confirmed of their suspicions.

In any case, even if the book were teaching malicious use of data, one should not fear reading books they disagree with. It’s a cornerstone of being open minded.

Stay sciencey folks.

Possible environmental benefits of off-Earth mining

Executive order signed by Trump to encourage extraction of resources on the Moon. Not sure what this means in practice (possibly it’s just symbolic), as it seems to fly in the face of the Outer Space Treaty, which the US is a signatory to. I know many people are worried about the downsides of this (there are some, I acknowledge), but as someone who works in space science I want to talk about some of the possible upsides. Notably, there are possible environmental gains to be had.

It is easier to get from the Moon or some asteroids to low Earth orbit than it is to get from Earth to low Earth orbit. If we mine ice on either the Moon or asteroids, apply electrolysis to separate out the hydrogen and oxygen, we can use that as a propellant for satellites or space missions. This will mean fewer refuel launches from Earth, and having to relaunch fewer satellites (today they last ~20 years then run out of fuel so we relaunch them).

Metals are becoming increasing harder to extract on Earth, with many of the concentrated, near surface deposits already being extracted. This leaves a number of deeper and less concentrated deposits with a greater impact to extract. As we are reliant on metals, extracting these from an asteroid and returning them to Earth may have less of an environmental impact.

Helium 3 can be found on the Moon in abundance. While nuclear fusion technology seems to be some way off, if it were commercialised, a supply of helium 3 from the Moon could supply fusion reactors for clean energy.

And an extra one not quite related to mining – but some people have proposed putting solar panels on the Moon and beaming the power back to the Earth’s surface to be collected and used.

Toothpaste, fluoride and vegan products

Introduction

Recently I was reading my girlfriend’s toothpaste (because I’m cool like that) and I noticed that it claimed to be vegan and fluoride free. Are there non-vegan toothpastes, I wondered. And what’s wrong with fluoride? Don’t you need it for strong teeth? My dentist told me so!

Image from wikipedia.org.
Image from wikipedia.org.

What’s wrong with toothpaste?

Since I’m not a medical scientist, the first question is perhaps one I’m a little more qualified to answer. I quickly checked the ingredients of my toothpaste and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see any animal products that I recognised. But just in case, I looked up the issue online. Apparently glycerine, a common ingredient in toothpastes (and a component of my toothpaste, uh oh…) can be sourced from either animal or vegetable fats. It would seem that most toothpaste don’t specify where the glycerine came from! Products such as Colgate claim to be animal free and have a vegetarian product guide on their website. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it hasn’t involved animal testing, so if you want to be certain, keep an eye out for toothpaste with a ‘vegan’ label on it.

Fluoride

The fluoride part might be a little trickier for me to explain, but I will certainly try. On the outset it appears to be a hotly contested issue. I’m well aware that such issues are difficult to research for newcomers, for example it is easy enough for someone new to reading about global warming to see a few websites claiming that global warming is false and believe that. One needs to be careful when reading something from a particular group and consider whether they may have any vested interests in having you believe something (this could be conscious or unconscious bias). Even your search entries make a difference, for example searching ‘negative health effects of fluoride’ will, of course, yield vastly different results compared to searching ‘positive health effects of fluoride’. Having said that, let’s dive in.

Fluoride is often added to and found in toothpaste and drinking water. The hypothesis is that it prevents tooth decay and cavities, is safe, and saves money. We can break down our research into these 3 categories. Does it really prevent decay? Is it really safe? And does it really save money? If the answer to all three is unequivocally yes, then fluoride is good. If all three are no, it’s bad. If it’s a mix, we’re in a spot of bother. (A note on doing your own research – I highly recommend setting your decision making based on some key criteria prior to starting the research to help reduce bias)

According to a report from 2004 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), fluoride may be essential for humans, but it has not been demonstrated unequivocally, “and no data indicating the minimum nutritional requirement are available.” Low concentrations of fluoride in drinking water do appear to protect against dental cavities, particularly in children. The benefits increase with concentration of fluoride in drinking water up to about 2 mg per litre, and the minimum concentration required is around 0.5 mg/litre. For context, the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines recommend a maximum concentration of fluoride in drinking water of 1.5mg/L, which aligns with the WHO guidelines from 2008. However, the 2004 WHO report also states that fluoride may have negative effects on tooth enamel and lead to mild dental fluorosis with drinking water concentrations from 0.9-1.2 mg/L. It is curious to note that this level is lower than the WHO guidelines in 2008.

Recently, researchers have been proposing that the recommended fluoride concentration in water is reduced to err on the side of caution. The United States Department of Health and Human Services has suggested that the recommended level of fluoride per litre in public drinking water be reduced from the range of 0.7-1.2 parts per million (ppm) to a flat 0.7 ppm.

So is it worth avoiding fluoride? Most likely not. The risk of developing dental cavities remains over a lifetime, while the risk of developing dental fluorosis is primarily in younger individuals. The 2012 Fluoride Guidelines for Australia include the following key recommendations (quoted):

  • From the time that teeth first erupt (about six months of age) to the age of 17 months, children’s teeth should be cleaned by a responsible adult, but not with toothpaste
  • For children aged 18 months to five years (inclusive), the teeth should be cleaned twice a day with toothpaste containing 0.5–0.55mg/g of fluoride (500–550ppm). Toothpaste should always be used under supervision of a responsible adult, a small pea-sized amount should be applied to a child-sized soft toothbrush and children should spit out, not swallow, and not rinse. Young children should not be permitted to lick or eat toothpaste.
  • Fluoride supplements in the form of drops or tablets to be chewed and/or swallowed, should not be used

As an aside, decay in children’s baby teeth has been increasing in recent times and is possibly linked to the increased use of bottled water, which is often not fluoridated.

According to the American Dental Association (ADA), $1 invested in water fluoridation can save $38 in dental treatment costs. This sounds great – essentially it means that we’re saving $37 that could go back to the tax payer or towards other projects. It’s not that unreasonable, as anti-smoking campaigns yielded similar returns through reduced burden on the public health system. But first we need to be sceptical. Would the ADA have a reason for people to believe this statistic? Maybe.

This article does a bit of a dive into the cost benefit analysis for fluoride, (including a review of the original Journal of Public Health Dentistry paper from 2001 that makes this claim) and finds that the claim is mostly true, but perhaps slightly over exaggerated (the real benefit looks closer to 30:1 compared to 38:1). This does not appear to account for any potential negative effects associated with fluoride.

Verdict

If you’re old enough to read this, you should probably be using fluoride toothpaste and not avoiding fluoridated water. Fluoride is beneficial for reducing the risk of cavities, and the risk of developing dental fluorosis appears to be limited mainly to young children. It may depend on where you live, as different countries and even different regions within countries have varying fluoride concentrations in their water. Don’t take fluoride supplements if your water is sufficiently fluoridated. If you are at elevated risk of developing cavities, you may be advised by a medical professional to use a fluoride mouth-rinse in addition to toothpaste and water.

Conclusion

This also got me wondering what other products that I take for granted turn out to not be vegan. I did a bit of hunting and found a host of products that I never knew weren’t vegan, and which I use every day or support. Gulp! Other products include:

  • Plastic bags, which use animal fat
  • Car and bike tyres, which often use animal-based stearic acid
  • Fireworks, which use the same stearic acid (and also suck in terms of pollution)
  • Glue used for wood working and musical instruments, made from boiling animal tissue and bones
  • Biofuels, which can be made from beef (yeah, that’s a thing)
  • Fabric softener – certain brands contain dehydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride which comes from cattle, sheep and horses
  • Shampoo and conditioner, which may animal products. Again, it’s tricky here as Panthenol, amino acids or vitamin B can be sourced either from plants or animals.
  • White and brown sugar – some brands use ash from animal bones to refine sugar
  • Bread, especially white bread, which often contains milk solids. Some breads contain egg.

The best way to be certain is to check for a vegan label or ask the manufacturer.

Most of the products in this article were taken from this list.

Do you have any unsuspecting everyday products to add to this list? Let us know by leaving a comment! If I’ve missed something in the fluoride write up or misrepresented some research, please comment below and I’ll be sure to fix it.

Disclaimer

This is not intended as medical advice. I research as thoroughly and carefully as I can, but I’m a geophysicist, not a medical scientist, doctor or dentist. I am just seeking to clear the air on a highly contested issue. If you are concerned about your fluoride intake, please seek professional medical advice. Pseudoscientific medicinal practitioners such as homoeopathists don’t count!

Why be vegan?

A lot of people have asked me why I’m vegan recently, so I thought I’d do a post to answer everyone past, present and future at once. In short, there are three reasons:

  • I don’t support animal cruelty
  • I don’t want to cause uneccessary damage to the environment
  • It’s better for my health than a diet involving meat and dairy

Each of these categories could easily be their own post, but I’ll just summarise the main points of each.

Animal cruelty

Most animals raised for meat come from factory farms, where poor conditions include tight living quarters where the animals often can’t even turn around. Animals are slaughtered in abattoirs by stunning them with an electric shock or a bolt gun, are tied upside down and then have their throats slit.

What about dairy and eggs?

It’s obvious but many people don’t think about the fact that cows (and all milk producing animals) only produce milk while they are pregnant or shortly after. Cows are typically forcibly impregnated, and the male calves are either slaughtered on birth or raised for meat so the mother’s milk can be harvested. The females are killed once they can no longer consistently produce milk. Chickens living in close quarters have their beaks removed to stop them from fighting each other, and can be put under intense 24 hour light to make them lay eggs faster.

What about cruelty free farms?

‘Cruelty free’ is a bit of a misnomer. You can raise an animal in pleasant living conditions their whole life and kill them without them feeling a thing, but that doesn’t justify it any more than you might consider it sane to kill and eat your dog because you like the taste and you do it ‘humanely’.

I thought about including images of factory farming but they might be too hard for some to see, so have a happy pig instead. If you've never seen photos and you're up to it, you should look them up. Image from geograph.org.uk.
I thought about including images of factory farming but they might be too hard for some to see, so have a happy/smug pig instead. If you’ve never seen photos and you’re up to it, you should look them up. Image from geograph.org.uk.

But if you’re still not convinced…

Environment

The effects of animal product consumption on the environment are many-fold.

  • It takes 2-2.5 acres of land to grow one cow in a factory farm*. Free range farming is even worse, and can take 10 times the amount of land or even more*. To use some figures from the documentary Cowspiracy, growing beef on a free range farm, and assuming the average meat intake of an American, it would take 3.7 billion acres of land to satisfy beef demand, yet there are only 1.9 billion acres of land on mainland USA*. Not all of this is suitable land either, and the population keeps on growing, which means a lot of land needs to be cleared!
  • Factory farms produce significant amounts of waste which ends up in waterways and eventually in the ocean, producing dead zones and harming marine life, and just wrecks the environment in general.
  • Livestock has a major greenhouse footprint, and not just from cow farts! The transportation and other associated activities all take energy, not to mention that it takes many kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of meat. Cattle alone accounts for 18% of global greenhouse emissions, compared to just 13% in the transport sector*.

Howard Lyman, a former cattle rancher, has stated that “You can’t eat meat and call yourself an environmentalist.”*

But if you’re still not convinced, do it for yourself.

 Health

  • Most chronic health diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes can be cured with a plant-based, whole foods diet. The risk of getting cancer is non-trivially lower, and even erectile dysfunction is completely curable through a vegan diet!
  • Most health concerns about a vegan diet are moot. Vegans get more than enough protein, calcium and iron just by eating a variety of plants. The only supplement a vegan needs to take is vitamin B12, and there are many fortified food options such as soy milk and nutritional yeast available.
  • Livestock are given antibiotics en masse to keep them alive, contributing to global antibiotic resistance.

 Hypocrisy

Once you learn a lot about meat and the livestock industry, it’s hard to continue supporting it without some severe level of cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy. I intend to do an extended piece on hypocrisy in general, but in the meantime, here are some of my favourite examples.

  • “I get distraught when a lion is needlessly shot dead by a dentist or dogs are eaten, but don’t mind when a cow is needlessly killed for my enjoyment, even though there are plenty of alternative products.”
  • “I can’t change, I’ve been doing this my whole life and humans have been doing it for a long time.” If this is an excuse you use, it’s hard to justify getting upset at slavers of the 17th century, as they could say the exact same thing to justify their ‘choice’, even though they’re not just choosing for themselves.
  • “It’s wrong to force your opinion on your kids and make them eat vegan.” Generally said by people who force their way of eating meat on their kids. Also said by those who don’t mind advertisements that tell (not suggest) people to eat meat, e.g. ‘Real men eat…’ above a meat section (I couldn’t make this up).
  • “Ugh tofu tastes disgusting!” Referring to an uncooked tofu. A bag of flour also tastes pretty bland uncooked.
  • “Aren’t you concerned about your health?” Generally said by people who consume a lot of red meat and cow milk, which are both quite bad for your health.

Your impact

If you consume an average amount of meat, every day you have the choice to save 4164 litres of water, 20 kg of grain, 2.8 square metres of forest, 9 kg of CO2 and 1 animal’s life*.

Bonus impact

If, like me, you decide you want to do more, you might consider donating to a charity such as the Humane League who produce and distribute advertising to encourage people to consume less animal products. In fact, the Humane League is so effective at what it does, it takes less than $1 to reduce 1 year of animal suffering, not including the other benefits.

Effect on me

People often ask me what the hardest part about being vegan is. “I bet you really miss meat.” “How do you get all your protein?” The hardest, and only hard part about being vegan is being insulted by non-vegans who don’t understand. I work in a professional setting and regularly am made fun of for my ethical choice. People might think it’s just a bit of fun, but it hurts, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s bullying, and it’s not ok. There’s no difference between making fun of someone for being vegan and calling them a rabbit or joking that you’ll make a salad for them and making fun of someone for what they wear or any other choice they make. I’ve been told by someone that they were embarrassed to introduce me to their friends because I was vegetarian. Even if you don’t decide to consume less animal products, I urge you to take care with what you say about those who do. Besides that, I’ve never been happier or felt more satisfied in life since going vegetarian and eventually vegan.

I hope you also decide to make the switch for the environment, for the animals and for yourself. If you have any questions I would love for you to get in touch or leave a comment!

 

If you’d like to hear more I’d highly recommend you watch Cowspiracy, which is now available free on Youtube. A lot of the figures and facts used here (marked with a *) are sourced from there.

Effective Altruism and Ethical Science

This piece was co-authored by Robert Farquharson and myself in response to what we believe is a key misconception about moral relativism, especially in the context of Effective Altruism.

Introduction
Peter Singer’s practical ethics argues that we have a remarkable opportunity and moral obligations to help those less geopolitically fortunate than ourselves. This has formed the basis for the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. What makes this model of philanthropy different to previous versions is the focus on effectiveness: EA takes a rigorously quantitative approach to assessing and engaging in ethical behaviour. The results have been more than interesting. As it turns out, saving a life or seriously reducing global poverty (see Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save) is surprisingly within our reach, giving us cause for hope. Our philanthropic missteps, however, are lamentably all too human. There are many cases of well-meant charitable causes that have, upon analysis, been found to cause more harm than good. By approaching these moral problems with the clarity and rigour of the scientific method, EA combines “the heart with the head”. This better equips us to avoid future missteps, and maximise the positive outcomes we can achieve. As the argument goes, we can and should do the most good possible.

EA has not been embraced without criticism. A prominent counterargument EA receives is that it has no grounds to comment on an objective view of ethics. Science is about measurement, and morality is about values, so we commonly perceive these as independent realms. After all, how can we measure morality? What facts about the world tell us what we should value? This is particularly problematic because, often enough, even members within the EA community itself will concede this point. People who are already dedicated to improving human well-being according to the best available evidence are unwilling to defend the moral objectivity of such a cause, preferring instead some version of moral relativism. Perhaps we can measure something about what we think about morality, but who’s to say that it can be universalised? Many of us are resigned to this kind of subjective, context sensitive view of morality, particularly when it comes to cross-cultural claims. What seems right to me may not seem so to you, but that’s okay. What’s right in our culture isn’t always going to be right in another culture, and it would be presumptuous at best to impose that view on others. Or so the argument goes.

The aim of this piece is be to discuss this line of criticism. First, the misconception that science has nothing to say about morality will be addressed. There are moral facts to be observed, these facts are just psychological and physical facts, about the world and the conscious creatures within it. Second, a double-standard that is often applied to potential objective claims to morality will be highlighted. A common rebuttal is that a science of morality can’t be fundamentally based on an assumption lest it become ‘subjective’ after all. However, most if not all other scientific domains operate in just such a way, and yet their philosophical and scientific credentials are never in doubt. Being objective is the not the same as being absolute, self-justifying, or unchanging.

It is our view that EA’s integrity as a movement precisely relies on making such objective claims to moral facts, e.g. that not all charities are equal. Being a fledgling, but promising form of a moral science, it is thus crucial for EAs to clear the air on the superiority and validity of the movement’s theoretical commitments. Responding to these criticisms could have implications for our understanding and discourse surrounding morality beyond just the EA community.

We will say here that, as a community, focusing on the ethical obligations over the opportunity that EA presents is potentially not the most effective way to encourage people to become effective altruists, but it is an important concern that we have decided to address here. This should by no means be an introduction to EA if you haven’t heard of it before! I’d recommend one of the many EA books out there, or this TED Talk by Peter Singer.

The Argument from EA

In The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer proposes 3 premises:

1) Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad.

2) If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, it is wrong not to do so.

3) By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care, at little cost to yourself.

If you agree with these premises, then Singer’s conclusion is that by not donating to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong. At the very least, you’re missing an opportunity to do something right. By breaking the logic down into these steps, it is hard to argue with, or to claim that individuals can have different ‘versions’ of morality that are equally as valid. However, while the third premise seems straightforward to most people, the first two are tougher to swallow. Accepting the third leads to a simple matter of calculus, some aid agencies just don’t prevent suffering and death as well as others. The numbers sell most people on the effectiveness clause. But why is altruism good, and why must I help? Isn’t suffering just subjective?  

The Measure of Morality: Suffering, Wellbeing, & How to Find Them.

Philosopher/Neuroscientist Sam Harris invites us to imagine the ‘Worst Possible World’ (WPW). The WPW is hellish, where every conscious creature experiences the worst possible misery it can for as long as it can. Think burning alive, but that is the only conscious experience you will ever have. This is a bad state of affairs, if the word ‘bad’ means anything at all. The pain and misery being suffered in the WPW, and conversely the happiness and flourishing that we relish in this world, are realised as experiences in consciousness. This makes them subjective in one sense, in that they can’t exist in the absence of a conscious subject ‘feeling’ them. However, this doesn’t make judgements about their character merely subjective, in the sense of always ‘relative’.

If you think that pain, misery, and suffering, are merely subjective tastes, and are unsure why you shouldn’t value those states instead of things like love, laughter, and satiety, you’re thoroughly confused. Conscious experience is, by its very nature, already and immediately coloured with a certain kind of character. If you’re not sure whether or not a child dying famished and diseased is having a conscious experience on the negative end of the spectrum somewhere, you’re not playing by the same rules. The only philosophical assumption you need to make here is that suffering the worst possible misery you can for as long as you can is, indeed, the minima of conscious experience. The starving child is hovering somewhere near this minima.
Once we accept this superficial fact about the nature of conscious experience, we can honestly admit that any changes that lead us away from the WPW are what we mean when we say ‘morally good’. Whatever reprieve we can offer the inhabitants of the WPW, however small, would potentially be the clearest case of a moral behaviour there is. If it’s within your power, at little to no cost to you, merely offering a 10 minute window of painless respite for the immiserated sufferers of the WPW is something you ought to do. Singer’s drowning child example leans on the same principle. To leave the dying children of the developing world in such a state of persistent misery, when we could easily do otherwise, is a moral failing.

So, notions of good and bad, right and wrong, have everything to do with the changing character of experience in conscious creatures. Every moral judgement comes down to how much and in what direction an action changes the conscious experience of some agent. Bringing someone closer to the worst possible misery they can experience is movement in the wrong direction. Again, if you’re unsure about this, try and find a conscious merit in dying from forced starvation.

With changes in consciousness as our basis, we can begin measuring those changes. If we know anything about consciousness at all, we know that it correlates meaningfully with brain states. Brain states are just a kind of physical state though, and thus completely amenable to objective inquiry. Some things lead to those brain states which cause experiences of pain, misery, and suffering, while others lead to the brain states that correlate with euphoria, heightened self-esteem, and the rest of the positive emotions we all crave. Importantly, it’s possible to measure these causal relationships scientifically. That is, we can measure how some actions or social constructs regularly and reliably move conscious experience in particular directions. Our goal is to move towards well-being, loosely defined as having much of one’s experience situated on the positive end of the conscious spectrum.

To sum, if our notions of morality are about experiential changes in conscious creatures, and the manner in which those changes occur are amenable to scientific inquiry, we can measure morality just like any other physical quantity. Moreover, EAs regularly do this. There is an important distinction to make between the character of the experiences themselves, and the things that reliably lead to them. A dangerous kind of moral relativism sneaks in when we confuse these two things. There are many ways to move our conscious experiences, but there will be a fact of the matter about which things move them in what direction. Science has, in fact, a lot to say about morality.

The Big Lebowski Response

While most people are convinced by this consequentialist notion of changes in conscious experience, there is a recalcitrant meme that is often cited in reply. Just like the scene in ‘The Big Lebowski’ where the Dude says, “Yeah, well, you know…that’s just, like, your opinion, man”, we often hear that it’s just all relative. Who’s to say I should value experiences like love, euphoria, compassion, and all the rest? Alternatively, who’s to say that my versions of justice and fairness are the same as yours? And, finally, what gives you the right to enforce your version on me? Science is perceived as not just silent on these issues, but in principle incapable of addressing them.

To quote a critic, “The point is this: Effective Altruism, while very welcome, is not an “objective” look at the value of philanthropy; instead it is a method replete with philosophical assumptions. And that’s fine, so long as everyone realizes it”. The problem, it seems, is that nothing ‘objective’ can be based on a ‘philosophical assumption’. If it isn’t truly objective, it’s just your opinion, and therefore lacks any normative force that actual sciences would have. This is plainly false.

Everyday Empiricism

To address the first point regarding the relativity of subjective experience, it’s easy to see how this form of response would be absurd when you transpose it into any other scientific domain. For example, take physical health and medical science. There is nothing in modern health science that can tell you why you ought to value being alive or free of disease, with absolute self-justifying or ‘scientific force’. However, we just do value these things. At the base of medical science are the ‘philosophical assumptions’ that being alive is better than being dead, and consequently, that the goal of medicine is to mitigate and prevent things that cause premature death. Once we all accept this, we can investigate the objective, causal relationships between certain physical quantities and their consequences with regards to how they move us towards that goal. If the Dude were to come to you with a gangrenous leg and say, “Who are you to say you’re healthier than me? That’s just your opinion, I don’t value being free of disease and pain”, we’d dismiss him as either simply ignorant of the facts, or of unsound mind.

We’ve all come to the conclusion that sensible adults value not dying prematurely of preventable ailments, and we don’t need to be medical professionals to know that such a value statement is a good thing. We ought to value being alive, and nothing within medicine ‘scientifically’ justifies that. Finding right and wrong answers about medicine only becomes possible once we all agree that this is what we mean by ‘health’, and that we value it. The objectivity and scientific validity of medicine is never brought into question because of this foundational dependence on a ‘philosophical assumption’ though. So, by assuming that seeking out intrinsically positive conscious states, and avoiding negative ones, as our broad and loose goal set in the moral domain, we’re not doing anything different to the other sciences.

The second point on relativism speaks to the fact that different people or cultures talk about ‘morality’ in different ways. Things like ‘justice’ mean different things in different places, and even in the same place but at different times. It seems like we’re all zeroing in on the same meta-principles, but the devil is very much in the detail. Again, we can look at physical health as a useful analogy.

Take Jasmuheen, an advocate of ‘breatharianism’. She claims that she survived for years on very little to no food or water, but was nourished by “pranic energy” instead. Ostensibly, she’s talking about the same thing my local GP and dietitian are talking about, like ‘health’, ‘energy’, and ‘nourishment’. These are words they use too. What has science got to say about which version of health and nourishment I should value? Quite obviously, a lot.

When asked to demonstrate her claims for a TV experiment, Jasmuheen agreed to live in a hotel room, watched by a security guard to ensure she consumed no food or water, and was regularly monitored by a professional doctor. After 48 hours she was presenting symptoms of acute dehydration, stress, slurred speech, weight loss, and high blood pressure, to name a few. In other words, exactly what medical science predicts will happen if you stop consuming actual nourishment. After 4 days the experiment was abandoned on the advice of the doctor, as kidney failure and death were likely to follow, and the results were broadcast for everyone to see.

Who’s version of health should we value? Demonstrated by the physical consequences, consuming “pranic energy” isn’t as nourishing as terrestrial food and water. Notice that at no point are we obliged to humour Jasmuheen or breatharianism as offering a potential ‘alternative framework’ for physical health. It isn’t just about our opinions. The universe is not forgiving in this way; at least 3 incidents of breatharian followers died after trying to emulate Jasmuheen. The breatharian is talking about the same meta-principles, like health and nutrition, they’re just wrong about how to move towards them.

It isn’t dogmatic or imperialist to say that breatharianism is dangerous, and to point out the obvious; it is not conducive to health and well-being. We as a community, either directly or via the state, are perfectly able, if not obliged, to intervene with clear conscience, the same way we ‘dogmatically’ intervene and tax cigarettes, or vaccinate our children. Once we’re honest with ourselves about what our goals are, there will be evidence to suggest the best and worst ways of achieving them. Following the evidence wherever it may lead is anathema to dogmatism. If someone thinks their infant dying of preventable diseases is a good thing, we simply don’t have to take them seriously. Similarly, if they think exposing their baby to a dangerous disease is an alternative way to inoculate them, we don’t need to indulge their ignorance.

It’s important to notice that we all engage in this kind of empirical scepticism constantly; we’re all everyday empiricists. When I call a plumber to fix my pipes, it’s because I trust they have the relevant expertise to achieve the goal of ‘good plumbing’, i.e. flowing water out of my taps, and having no leaks. Knowledge of the facts of plumbing is what separates me from them. I don’t pretend to know an ‘alternative framework’ for good plumbing, nor do I argue with the valuation that good plumbing entails a lack of leaks. When my faucet spews water I don’t tell guests, “Who are you to say your plumbing is better than mine? To me, good plumbing is about water coming from as many places at once as possible”.

There is no difference when it comes to the domain of morality and the promotion of wellbeing; not all positions are equal. Others may be using the terms ‘morality’, and ‘well-being’. However, the question is not, “what do those things mean for them?”. If they don’t think morality has something to do with changing conscious states for the better, they’re like the weird plumber who values leaks, and we have to admit that openly. The more important question is, instead, “how well are those things working out for them?”. How satisfied are the weird plumber’s customers? On the other hand, if they do value conscious wellbeing, but they think systematically subjugating an entire gender is a possible route to that end, for example, they’re like the breatharian. They’re talking about the same meta-principles, but simply confused about the facts. Again, we have to admit this openly.

For EA’s, this is most relevant when the effective ways to do good are convoluted and counterintuitive. But just because these solutions are hard to find, or intuitively unpalatable, does not mean that there is no answer at all or that we shouldn’t try to find one. For example, an ethical shopper might avoid goods produced in sweatshops so as to not support the exploitative workplace practices. In Doing Good Better, William MacAskill explains that this is well intended, but is not the most effective way to help workers in developing nations, and can actually cause more harm than good. How? The sweatshop jobs are actually the most desired in some countries. The other jobs require hard labour and are lower paid, and for some the choice is between working in a sweatshop and unemployment. Boycotting sweatshops can eliminate these jobs. Furthermore, sweatshop goods tend to cost less than those produced elsewhere, so one is usually better off buying the sweatshop shirt and donating the savings to a charity that helps  the poor. This is just one of the endless examples of counterintuitive ways to maximise well-being.

The Absolute/Objective Conflation

Emphatically, this is not to say that there aren’t or won’t be many equivalent ways to be moral, or to promote well-being. There is no ‘one’ way to be healthy, or to have good plumbing either. Similarly, in light of new evidence and technology, both those definitions could change in the future; they are not absolute. For example, living to a ripe old age of 40 was considered healthy in the past, but with further advances in modern medicine and gerontology, living to 150 could be a modest goal for many people alive today. It just amounts to admitting that once we declare our goals honestly, there are also many ways not to achieve them, and we don’t have to be afraid to admit this. What’s healthier, eating a cucumber or a stick of celery? The answer to this question, if there is one, is probably trivial. That doesn’t undermine the objectivity of dietetics and nutrition. The inability to decide which of the two vegetables to eat for breakfast doesn’t make the distinction between food and poison any less real or consequential though. That is, tough questions we can’t answer yet don’t relegate the easy answers to merely being ‘low hanging fruit’ in an otherwise incomplete or problematic theory. Depending on what they specifically eat, a meat eater may be just as healthy as a vegetarian (think vegetarians who only eat potato chips), but that doesn’t mean we have to elevate breatharianism to the same plane. Having many ways to eat healthily is pluralism, claiming every way of eating is healthy is relativism.

The same goes for morality. There could be many ways to restructure our societies to better promote well-being, but this doesn’t detract from the fact that there will also be many ways to do the reverse. Indeed, we already know that there are many ways to do the reverse; for example, humanity frequently engaged in the slave trade. Pluralism is not the same thing as relativism, nor is being objective the same as being absolute, or unchanging.

The Promise of EA

We don’t suffer any illusions of relativism in most domains of our lives because we value evidence. We update our confidence in particular beliefs to correspond with the weight of the evidence in favour of them. It is this incursion by the scientific method into the realm of morality that makes EA what it is, and allows it to speak from an objective viewpoint, despite its philosophical assumptions. We value subjective well-being as the basis of morality in the same way we value physical health or good plumbing, and the science of well-being can’t begin until we’re similarly honest about that fact. EA is honest about this, and the measurements have already begun.

The separation of science and measurement from the realm of values and morality is a language game we don’t often play. It will be to the detriment of the entire global population if we continue to play it with perhaps the most important question we can ever ask: how can we grow and flourish together, for the well-being of all conscious creatures and the planet that sustains them? There may be multiple right answers, but we have to unapologetically admit that there will be wrong ones too. EA is in a position to lead the way on an empirical project of well-being, it just needs to embrace it.

By Robert Farquharson and Michael Dello-Iacovo