<aside> 🔍 “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”

– Jeremy Bentham (1789)

Should we care about non-human animals? We'll show how it can be important to care impartially, rather than ignoring weird topics or unusual beneficiaries.

We'll also cover expected value theory (which helps when we're uncertain about the impact of an intervention), and give some ideas for how we could improve the lives of animals that suffer in factory farms.

Key concepts from this session include:

• Impartiality: helping those that need it the most, only discounting people according to location, time, and species if those factors are in fact morally relevant.
• Expected value: We’re often uncertain about how much something will help. In such circumstances, it may make sense to weigh each of the outcomes by the likelihood that they occur and pick the action that looks best in expectation.

The importance (and difficulty) of considering unusual ideas:

Society’s consensus has been wrong about many things over history (e.g. the sun circling the Earth, the morality of slavery). In order to avoid making similar mistakes, we need to be open to considering unusual ideas and moral positions, while still thinking critically about the issues and acting cooperatively with others.

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Required Materials

Impartiality and radical empathy:

• Radical Empathy (10 mins)
• Moral Progress and Cause X (5 mins.)
• On "fringe" ideas (7 mins.)
• The possibility of an ongoing moral catastrophe (summary) (8 mins.)

Expected value

• Expected Value (5 mins.)
• Hits based giving (15 mins.)

The case for caring about animal welfare:

• All Animals Are Equal - An excerpt from the opening chapter of Animal Liberation (1975), widely regarded as the founding text of the animal rights movement. (5 mins.)
• Animal Welfare Cause report, Founders Pledge (10 mins.)

Strategies for improving animal welfare

• Want to help animals? Focus on corporate decisions, not people’s plates. (10 mins.)
• How Students Will Lead the Alternative Protein Revolution - Amy Huang (26 mins.)
• Animal Advocacy Careers (website, explore)

Exercise (10 mins., please complete this before your session)

This session’s exercise is about doing some personal reflection. There are no right or wrong answers here, instead this is an opportunity for you to take some time and think about your ethical values and beliefs.

A letter to the past (10 mins.)