I believe that moral propositions are statements about reality that are objectively true or false rather than just being expressions of personal sentiment or attitude or cultural norms. I also think it’s wrongly assumed that moral realism requires a supernatural basis. In short, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are emotional concepts so irrespective of opinion or belief, what is intrinsically good is positive emotion (pleasure) and what is intrinsically bad is negative emotion (pain). Since consciousness is natural phenomenon, emotions are objectively real, happiness and suffering are objectively good and bad. Torture is morally bad because the pain it causes is by it’s very nature negative and it’s ontologically true that the victim is in pain. While the victim alone experiences their pain, it doesn’t exist “for them”, it either exists or it doesn’t exist, so it isn’t bad “for them”, it’s bad by itself. This makes even more sense when you consider the inter-connectedness of nature and the problem of personal identity.

   Hedonism as a theory of value (not to be confused with psychological hedonism, layman ‘hedonism’ or even welfare hedonism) is a moral realist position and it’s more central to my understanding of ethics and my ‘philosophical identity’ than utilitarianism as a normative ethical theory is. Value hedonism necessarily implies that (total) hedonistic (act) utilitarianism is the correct basis for moral decision making but hedonistic utilitarians don’t have to identify with moral realism, they may ascribe to error theory (moral nihilism) or non-cognitivism and simply view hedonistic utilitarianism as appealing. I’d have to worry about misrepresenting myself as a utilitarian but value hedonism is only a meta-ethical claim about what is true. Whether or not a value hedonist can bring themselves to do the right thing or care equally about the emotional well-being of all (potential and actual) sentient beings, (s)he would have to concede that doing so would be logically consistent (if she or he cares about their own well-being), not because it’s ‘logical’ to care about anyone’s welfare but because it’s arbitrary to distinguish between the value of your feelings and anyone else’s.

  Whether or not moral realism is true , it can serve as an objective basis for altruistic concerns. Without moral realism, “don’t kill people” can be reduced to “it bothers me and I want you to feel the same way”. Attitudes and emotional responses are largely dependent on conscious beliefs, if people believe that there is an objective reason for them to be kind or sympathetic, they will probably be more likely to do so instinctively. Not that anti-realism necessarily leads to ethical egoism but people can be counted on to take their own interests into consideration (even if they’re die hard nihilists), anti-realists can be counted on to consider the interests of other people as long as they have a preference for the well-being of other people but there’s no objective reason why they should have such a preference. Enlightened self-interest can only justify so much empathy, the amount of altruism required to make as great of a difference as possible and the amount required for ‘warm, fuzzy feelings’ isn’t necessarily equivalent, the standard for how altruistic the actor should be is determined by the actor’s needs and not the needs of everyone affected by his or her behavior, and there’s no reason why, in future, these ‘warm and fuzzy’ feelings can’t be artificially stimulated without any altruistic behavior or concern. Anti-realism doesn’t allow for any realization that the interests of other people really would warrant consideration even if it wasn’t given.

    I think there’s a common misconception that doing volunteer work for a cause is more ‘meaningful’ than making a financial donation but the latter might be even more effective in most cases. First of all, by donating money someone is donating the time and energy that was invested into the acquisition of that money. Secondly, although these things need to be done, there are only so many people needed to hand out food in a homeless shelter, walk dogs for an animal shelter, campaign for Oxfam etc. Money directly provides the resources that the beneficiaries of non-profit organizations need. In addition to donating to (cost-effective) charities, economic activism can include boycotting companies with morally questionable practices and generally sharing resources (good and services) in a gift economy. Diminishing marginal utility justifies redistributive economic policies since resources shared among several people will, other factors being equal, increase more total satisfaction than the same amount consumed by one person alone or a smaller group of people would (and obviously impoverished people gain more from $100 than more affluent people do).

    Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage states that an agent has a comparative advantage if they can do or produce something at a lower opportunity cost than anyone else, the cost being the gain from every other good or service that could have been produced or performed instead, this doesn’t mean that someone is the best at producing a product or performing a service, which would be an absolute advantage, and it shows that trade between two parties is more mutually beneficial when they specialize in what they do or produce best in exchange for what they don’t. Since specialization produces greater overall gain than dividing time and energy between different tasks does, it should make an even greater difference if all interested parties were to financially support the work and income of full-time, skilled workers who specialize in social/political activism and community service work than if they were to do such work part time themselves.

     I evaluate sex-related issues with the same basic first principle that I evaluate all issues with ( the idea that aggregate pleasure is the only intrinsic good and aggregate pain is the only intrinsic bad). From this point of view, sexual pleasure has the same inherent value that all pleasure has and I don’t believe that some positive emotions are qualitatively more or less positive than others. The pleasure of the rapist is inherently good but if it’s outweighed by the suffering of the victim then the rape is an overall bad thing and ethically wrong for that reason or because the suffering caused isn’t necessary to increase a greater amount of pleasure, the rapist should be criticized for disregarding the interests of the victim. I view pornography, prostitution, beastuality, incest, objectification, specific sex acts etc. as good or bad, and they can be both, for the same basic reason.

    I think why sex is worth having to begin with is a more important question than whether or not sex and love are connected, which would also cover why they ‘should’ be. I don’t think that sexual pleasure has to be justified by anything other than itself so I don’t see anything necessarily wrong with loveless sex (or sex with someone who isn’t generally ‘loved’, if sex is by default loving) but love is a pleasurable emotion so I’d think that sex with love, or sex with a partner who someone generally loves, would be more satisfying. Many people not only prefer sex with someone they love but view sex with someone they don’t as distasteful, ‘empty’, even ‘heartless’, I don’t know whether or not this is due to culturally ingrained sex negative attitudes that most people aren’t consciously aware of having or something innate to human psychology. Sexual desire and love are controlled by different regions of the brain but, as far as I know, all positive, physical contact induces the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin. I don’t think that sex is only valid as an ‘expression of love’ but I do think that affection is a natural consequence of uninhibited sexual intimacy.

    Most people would agree that to prioritize the interests of members of your race over members of another race, on the basis of race, is ‘racist’ and violates the idea of racial equality (or at the very least they would claim this if the actor was White). Even non-aggressive racial separatists and racial nationalists are vilified by the mainstream although nothing about racial pride and racial solidarity, which itself doesn’t imply separatism (and which I view as having inherent and instrumental value, only because ‘pride’ is a positive emotion and a sense of belonging can satisfy a human need to identify with groups, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110304115003.htm, http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/10/23/ethnic-pride-boosts-adolescents-happiness/349.html ), or some kind of racial separatist or nationalist ideology necessarily contradicts the idea of racial equality. It’s meaningless for someone to claim that they’re for racial equality if they don’t give equal consideration to humans of all ‘races’, this is true even if they don’t completely disregard the interests of racial out group members. Most people who accept this take for granted that special concern for friends and family members over strangers, ‘innocent’ people over ‘bad’ people, country (wo)men over foreigners , humans over non-humans etc., but probably especially friends and family members over strangers, is justified. I don’t see how this isn’t inconsistent, in both scenarios someone is being discriminated against on the basis of not belonging to a favored group or class of people and both positions are fundamentally egocentric because other people are being treated as deserving of concern based on the actor’s personal attachment to or identification with them.

    Moral impartiality can seem cold (agent relative partiality would probably seem cold to an ideal moral agent who sympathized with all beings equally) but I think moral impartiality is what logically consistent egalitarianism implies. This doesn’t require ‘liking’ or ‘loving’ all people equally (unless ‘love’ means a concern for the welfare of other people, which most people agree it involves, and not attachment) because it’s the feelings of other people that warrant giving them moral consideration, not your feelings about them.

    Like racists, sexists and speciesists, ‘full-blown’ egoists also make an arbitrary distinction between harm/benefit to others and to themselves. As a naturalist, I feel completely comfortable saying that there’s no objective reason to be any more or less concerned with anyone else’s well-being than you are with your own. The value of an experience stands independently of whose experience it is or any arbitrary characteristic of the being who experiences it. Furthermore, the egoist has no more of a vested interest in what happens to his or her future self than they do in what happens to anyone else. The experiences of any two presently existing people are separated by space which is what makes them separate beings (they would still be separate beings if they were clones with the same DNA, history and personality). Just as neither of them has any direct access to mental states separated from their own by space, neither has any access to future states separated from their own by time, only the illusion of being the same permanent and unchanging experiencer (person, being, mind, ) who will be the same experiencer of future mental states. If we define a person in terms of sentience, how do people continue existing when unconscious (ie. in non-REM sleep) and if an experience and experiencer necessarily involve one another, how is the experiencer at one point in time the same experiencer at another when the experience has changed?

    More than 46 billion chickens are killed worldwide every year. Chickens are usually either bred and raised directly for their flesh (broilers) or for egg production (layers). Most chickens used for egg production spend their lives in overcrowded sheds filled with tens of thousands of other chickens with no room to move around or perform behaviors that come naturally to them. It’s not uncommon for stressful conditions to induce heart attacks in chickens. Since chickens are viewed by the industry as expendable and veterinary care isn’t cost efficient, ailing chickens go without treatment and the decomposing bodies of dead chickens left in their sheds further contributes to an unsanitary environment. As a means to prevent chickens from pecking at one another (unusual behavior they display only in extremely painful circumstances), factory farms use a hot razor to sever the tips of their beaks. Many layers are so malnourished that their bones break when they’re picked up. When they’re no longer able to lay eggs, they’re typically sent to the slaughterhouse at around a year old (they have a natural lifespan of around 7 years). Since males can’t lay eggs, they are immediately killed at birth, normally by being thrown into a grinding machine, suffocation, being shocked by electrified plates or sent, fully conscious, through macerators. Broilers have slightly more space to move around than layers do, they aren’t shoved into crates but instead live on the ground of barns. Broilers are fattened up, through selective breeding and being given a diet of high fat feed with antibiotics, and grow at a drastically more rapid pace than chickens in the wild do. Since their bodies can’t naturally support the weight, they’re often incapable of walking. Contrary to popular belief, the conditions for ‘free range’ and ‘cage free’ chickens aren’t much better. Legally, the claim that chicken derived products are ‘free range’ only requires a small, narrow opening in a shed housing tens of thousands of chickens which can’t accommodate all of them. ‘Free range’ chickens are ultimately killed in the same way that other factory ‘farmed’ chickens are, being hung upside down while their throats are slit before being scalded in boiling water to remove their feathers.   

    Cattle are also divided into two groups when it comes to human use, those exploited for milk production and those for their flesh. Worldwide, around 300 million cows are raised for their flesh and around 200 million for milk production (I’m assuming this is limited to cows in organized, modern Western style factory farms). Because bulls behave aggressively in restricted, tight quarters, they are dehorned and castrated without anesthesia. Like the male offspring of chickens used for egg production, male calves are separated from their mothers a few days after birth, in the ‘wild’, they would normally stay with their mothers for around 9-12 months. As fellow mammals, cows have the same maternal-offspring bonding need that human mothers and their small children have (the same is also true for chickens who have an empathetic response to the distress of their chicks). These male calves are restricted to tiny stalls for almost half a year and are fed a low protein/iron diet to prevent their muscles from developing so their flesh (‘veal’) remains soft. This is actually illegal in the E.U and some U.S states. Like chickens, cows are fattened up and made to support more weight than they can, their bones are also brittle and weak as a result of poor nutrition. Cows used for milk production are made to produce 9.5 tonnes of milk a year, after around 4 years of having been milked painfully by machines and constantly separated from their offspring, it’s not uncommon for them to drop dead from exhaustion before being sent to the slaughterhouse. If they can survive that, they are electrically stunned and, like chickens, tied upside down and cut open until they bleed to death. They have a natural lifespan of around 20 years.

    Around 1.3 billion pigs are killed worldwide every year. Pigs, who, like cats and dogs, make affectionate and friendly companions ( although more intelligent, as chickens and probably cows are as well), are kept in tiny, unsanitary cages with chains tied around their necks. Piglets are separated from their mothers at around 3-4 weeks, they require around 13-19 weeks of weaning. Pigs naturally have around 6-8 piglets a year, on factory farms, they’re constantly impregnated and made to have around 20 piglets a year. In frustration, pigs will bite at the tails of other pigs near them, to deal with this, factory farms use metal pliers to clip their teeth and the tips of their tails, without anesthesia. Like other factory ‘farmed’ animals, pigs can literally die from the stress of their lives alone.

    Around a month before I became a vegan, when PETA’s ‘Meet Your Meat’ video convinced me to stop eating the flesh of chickens (I had stopped eating ‘red meat’ months earlier), I rationalized my continuing to eat fish and marine invertebrates by claiming that they lacked nervous systems complicated enough to feel pain. I don’t think any modern scientist would take seriously the idea that humans are the only sentient animals on the planet, there’s virtually irrefutable evidence that all mammalian nervous systems (as well as avian nervous systems) are too similar to ours for humans to be the only sensitive, feeling animals, we also have good reason to believe that all vertebrates are sentient and to give the benefit of the doubt to ‘simple’ invertebrates as well. Fish have physiological and behavioral responses that indicate pain and their brains fire neurons in the same way that human brains do when humans feel pain. This isn’t ‘proof’ but it’s evidence. As a pescetarian I claimed that fish can’t feel pain because they lack a neocortex but different species use different brain structures to handle the same functions (even in humans, in cases where an entire hemisphere, or certain regions, of the brain have been removed or impaired, other regions of the brain will compensate). Not only do fish respond as though they feel pain but they actually alter their behavior as a result, they’ll avoid nets if they remember having seen another fish being caught in one, for example. An estimated 90-100 million “tonnes of fish” are killed each year so even more so than chickens, human dietary preferences might victimize fish and other marine creatures more than any other group of animals besides maybe insects. Hundreds of thousands of birds, turtles and marine mammals like dolphins and whales are also killed in fishing nets every year.

    Like vertebrates, many invertebrates produce natural opiates and substance P and they show less of a reaction to noxious stimuli when given morphine which suggests that they can feel pain and morphine helps to alleviate that pain. Fruit flies avoid odors they associate with having been electrically shocked and pursue odors they associate with rewards like sugar. Cockroaches who underwent similar differential conditioning trials also associated the smell of peppermint with sugar and vanilla with saline and pursued and avoided both accordingly. Bigger brains do not necessarily indicate a greater capacity for complicated functions. Vertebrate neurons project a single axon whereas invertebrate neurons have several axons that are each capable of functioning independently, I’m not sure how this might relate to sentience but invertebrate neurons aren’t as primitive as we’d assume. Consciousness is just the processing of information and neurons are specialized information processing cells that all ‘animals’ have.The nervous system of every animal on the planet descends from a common ancestry. If insects and other ‘primitive’ invertebrates are sentient, then they make up the majority of sentient beings on this planet and it’s possible that most of the suffering (or enjoyment) felt in the (this) world is felt by them.

    Tens of millions of non-human animals are dissected, gassed, burned, infected, electrocuted, blinded, poisoned etc. by scientists every year, often for almost certainly unnecessary things like testing the safety or effectiveness of cosmetic products or household cleaners. I won’t get into vivisection or deforestation (and the displacement of ‘wild’ animals by humans), zoos, circuses, commercial pet breeding, poaching etc. There’s also a strong ecological argument for veganism and I won’t get into how surprisingly intelligent non-human animals we exploit for food and other purposes are as well intelligence and non-‘instinctive’ behavior in animals like honeybees, wasps, . I don’t see intelligence as having any direct moral relevance, if a person (being) can suffer or enjoy, then their suffering or happiness should be given the same consideration that any other being’s would. There should be no moral hierarchy.

    Although I became a vegan based on the idea that all sentient beings are equal, it wasn’t explicitly on the basis of hedonistic utilitarian reasoning (although I did think that sentience was the only morally relevant criterion), which I would now use to justify veganism and to criticize unnecessary mistreatment of non-human animals. A utilitarian argument for prescribed animal rights would have to concede that factory farming, vivisection, and other exploitation of non-human animals can be theoretically justified but not giving non-human interests the same consideration we would give human interests isn’t even hypothetically justifiable. Giving all animals equal consideration means that if causing a great deal of suffering to humans (or depriving them of happiness) was the only way to prevent a greater amount of suffering in non-human animals or produce a greater amount of pleasure for them, the utilitarian actor would be just as willing. If they aren’t then they aren’t giving non-humans equal consideration. The cost of factory farming clearly outweighs the benefit, the minor pleasure that affluent people who can afford a healthier plant based diet gain from eating the body or bodily products of factory farmed animals doesn’t outweigh the unimaginable, constant agony of the victims. Affluent humans don’t need to eat meat for their well-being. It’s easier to take a utilitarian argument for vivisection seriously when you consider how much suffering a cure for AIDS, cancer and other medical illnesses could alleviate but there’s no direct reason to prefer that the victims be non-human (if vivisection is a necessary evil to begin with). There’s the issue of humans living in fear if they knew they could be abducted and used for experimentation but that could be dealt with by using orphaned infants, some mentally retarded adults or prisoners, not because the suffering of these humans would count for less but because the general population could assure themselves that it won’t happen to them or their loved ones as long as they avoid committing serious crimes. Results from experimentation carried out on humans would be more applicable which would make the pain caused less likely to have been for nothing. Animal rights theorists who take a deontological stance against animal testing but view the killing of non-human animals for food in times of famine should be consistent. Also unlike deontological animal ‘rights’ supporters, I no longer see the exploitation (‘use’) of humans or non-humans as necessarily bad if the exploited are neither harmed or deprived of happiness.

    Easily refuted arguments against veganism include “animals have no moral code and kill other animals, ” (infants and some retarded humans can’t morally reason either, and some humans also kill other animals, but moral consideration doesn’t have to be earned and it can’t be forfeited, veganism only requires that humans have a moral code, never mind that most non-humans kill to survive and the ones we eat are primarily herbivorous), “what about plants” (there’s no evidence for sentience in plants, even if there were, we need plant food to survive, we don’t need animal flesh), “animals die in the production of agriculture, everything from ink to roads and things which are virtually unavoidable contain animal products or are the result of exploiting non-human animals” (this is true but causing some pain is unavoidable in life, it’s better to cause less suffering than more), “animals don’t have souls and/or are less intelligent than humans” (either an animal can experience some degree of pleasure/pain or they can’t, how intelligent they are or whether or not they have souls is irrelevant to that), etc.

    Preference utilitarians typically argue that most non-human animals can not be considered as ‘persons’ because they lack self-awareness and a(n illusory) concept of being the same being who exists over extended periods of time, they don’t have an interest in continuing to live because their desires are moment to moment and they can’t conceive of their lives in an abstract way. It may (or may not?) be true that most non-human animals do not have extended future oriented desires or an abstract desire to continue living since most non-human animals lack episodic memory and the self-awareness it requires but I view desire and (non-felt) desire fulfillment as being of neutral value. You can’t practically produce meat, dairy or eggs for millions of consumers without causing pain to the animals these products come from, I think most preference utilitarians would admit to this, but even if we could painlessly kill pigs for food, if pigs enjoy their lives then their deaths would deprive them of something beneficial, whether or not they have a future oriented desire for what they’re being deprived of or can appreciate this in some abstract way is irrelevant, we can. It’s also been pointed out that the happiness of a being can be ‘replaced’ by bringing another equally happy being into existence but if you can avoid killing one and bring more relatively happy beings into existence, there would be more well-being in the world than there would otherwise have been. I think pleasure, and not the realization of preference, is what makes a life worth living. Desire is consciously felt, if the realization or thwarting of a desire isn’t consciously felt, which would be pleasing or distressing and good or bad on that basis, in what meaningful way has that desire been satisfied or frustrated?

   Democracy is ‘obviously’ preferable in practice but I don’t see it as being necessarily ideal in theory. In theory, I wouldn’t necessarily prefer a democracy over a ‘benevolent dictatorship’ if the latter could be maintained without unnecessary force and had the best interests of the community in mind and not power for it’s own sake. The policies that a government should implement are the ones with the best overall consequences, who has a say in that decision making process isn’t inherently important. A decision doesn’t become rational (or good, even if it is rationally thought out) just because it’s supported by the majority. Children and minors who are old enough to have meaningful political opinions are excluded from the democratic process and often denied autonomy on the basis that they aren’t as capable of making rational decisions but I don’t see why adults should assume, on deontological grounds, that these rights should naturally come with adulthood when all adults are not equally as capable of rational decision making. In an admittedly far fetched theoretical scenario when a benevolent dictatorship could be justified, the members of this government, or single ruler, should have no higher social status than anyone else. Governing would just be a job like any other.

   While I don’t see democracy as necessarily being theoretically ideal, I think I would see a one world government as being ideal, at least to the extent that governments are necessary to begin with. The purpose of a government, in my opinion, should be to protect the interests of it’s citizens (police protection, social welfare programs, public services, ) and nothing more. Since utilitarianism is necessarily egalitarian in terms of giving the same *consideration* to all beings, I don’t see a justification for the U.S government prioritizing the interests of U.S Americans over Mexicans or the South African government prioritizing the interests of South Africans over Tanzanians etc. In practice, attempting a one world government might have very bad consequences, especially considering different cultural attitudes toward human rights that people across the world have and all the problems that might come with abolishing borders but it would be ideal. If humans, or artificial intelligence created by humans, ever colonize other planets or come across sentient beings who are native to other planets, the people (moral agents) on Earth should form an interplanetary government or alliance with those aliens or native born descendants of Earth born colonialists or at least offer humanitarian aid and support, share scientific knowledge and advancements (if doing so wouldn’t be harmful), allow them to freely settle on Earth etc. Although non-human animals can never really participate in human society, any one world government with a humanitarian, if not explicitly utilitarian, agenda should consider their interests as well. Non-human animals should have legal rights that would protect them, to the extent that they could be enforced, from torture, rape (commercial breeding), unjustified killing, encroachment of their habitat,  and this government should also invest resources into generally improving their standard of living.

   This one world government shouldn’t have to have a flag or a national anthem, there shouldn’t have to be any sense of a shared ‘national’ identity or expectation of ‘patriotism’ or ‘allegiance’, the citizens whose interests my ideal government would cater to wouldn’t be considered a social group in the way that Brasiliens, Nigerians, Koreans,  are. This government should be impartial in their concern for all people without any need for perceived social, cultural and ethnic similarities.

    Not surprisingly, I also think that utilitarian reasoning has to ideally favor communism (the stateless, classless egalitarian society that Marx envisioned as the end-goal of socialism but not Marxist theory, I’m aware that Marx disassociated himself from Bentham’s utilitarianism and would have rejected a purely consequentialist justification for communism) even though there’s a strong utilitarian argument against ‘communism’ (state socialism) in practice, given it’s track record and human ‘nature’. Regulated capitalism might be the best system in practice but the communist ideal of redistributing resources according to need rather than merit or luck fits in perfectly with the egalitarian nature of utilitarianism. I don’t think strict economic egalitarianism has any value, a society where half the people were affluent and the other half were poor would probably be better than one where everyone was equally poor but a utilitarian justification for capitalism or economic inequality can not take into account the idea of natural property rights or that some people are more deserving of resources. Utilitarianism can justify inequal treatment but not inequal consideration.

   I initially became pro-choice on the basis of autonomy and individual rights but now I’m only directly concerned with the overall consequences of abortion, as summed up among everyone directly or indirectly affected by an abortion in a particular scenario or as a general legal policy. The following factors in to whether or not I think abortion is justified :

*the distress of a forced pregnancy and child labour

*the distress of women incarcerated for having abortions or miscarriages that are suspected as abortions if abortion becomes/remains illegal (depending on where in the world you live

*the distress caused by back alley abortions and loss of happiness in cases when a botched abortion leads to death

*the happiness of the potential being (fetus) would feel if not for having been aborted as well as the suffering (for him/her) that will be prevented if it is

*The effect an abortion will have on the father, whether or not he would view it as a loss or resent not having a say in the decision as well as the costs of unwanted fatherhood

* The distress of anyone aware of the abortion who disagrees with the decision and views it as having been wrong or even women themselves who regret the decision and come to view it as having been wrong

etc.

   When I mention the resentment or offense of the father or anyone else who might view abortion as unjustified, I’m not trying to imply that their view is correct, that women have a ‘duty’ or ‘obligation’ to reproduce or that other people rightfully have a say in what pregnant women do with their bodies but my concern is with the consequences of a decision and not directly with autonomy, rights or ‘justice’ so the pleasure and pain of everyone affected by a decision factors in to whether or not it was an overall good or bad decision to have made. This doesn’t mean that any one person’s, or group of people’s, pleasure or pain (at a given moment or in the long-run) necessarily tips the scale or that even better options aren’t available if it does. The emotional response that pro-lifers have to abortion would probably change if they could be persuaded to analyze moral issues solely in terms of the emotional well-being an action causes or minimizes. Also, while I don’t view the fetus (prior to around 24 weeks when pain probably can’t be felt) as a ‘person’ or having a natural right to be carried to term, I no longer make a distinction between the future happiness that a potential sentient being would feel if brought into existence and the happiness that an existing being would feel if allowed to continue living, both hold equal weight (nor do I make a distinction between causing pain/loss of happiness and allowing it). Besides global warming, scarcity of resources and all of the problems that can come with a larger population, creating more sentient beings comes with a price that allowing existing beings to continue living does not = pregnancy, child birth and, to some extent, parenting itself, never mind the fear most humans would have if they knew they might be killed, even painlessly in their sleep, as a means of lowering the population.

   As for after-birth ‘abortions’ (infanticide), I can’t see myself accepting them in most real life scenarios. If I did, the parents would have to be unwilling to raise a child, adoption or being placed into a group home wouldn’t be an option and/or there was good reason to believe the child would have an overall painful life. Unlike preference utilitarians, I view the infant and any being capable of emotion as a ‘person’ regardless of whether or not they’re ‘self-aware’ and what the infant would lose if killed warrants the same consideration as the interests of the parents, group home workers, the taxpayers who pay for orphanages etc. do. On a side note, it’s sometimes said that preference-utilitarianism captures the ‘tragedy’ of death better than hedonistic utilitarianism does but I don’t see why preference frustration (which seems immaterial to me if no one feels better or worse off as a result of an external state of affairs that is in sync with their preferences) would be worse than happiness is good. If pleasure and pain are symmetrical in value then maximizing happiness is no more or less important than minimizing suffering, preventing X amount of happiness is just as wrong as causing an equivalent amount of pain. True, actually being dead (unconscious) is of neutral value but we should want sentient beings to be happy as much as we should want them to be free from suffering. Painlessly killing someone in their sleep would be harmless but if they have a life worth living, it would wrong them.

   Since people are normally happier when they have control over their own bodies and the option of when to start a family, if they do, as well as the problem of back alley abortions, legal punishment (which is always ‘evil’, justified or not), I’m pro-choice since I believe forcing women to endure unwanted pregnancies would have overall bad consequences, almost in the same way that forcing men to donate their organs for the benefit of others would. Considering global warming and the number of women throughout the world who aren’t in a position to care for their children, it might be a good idea to encourage abortion. The basis for my argument can be used to justify opposing abortion in some theoretically possible scenarios (since my concern is always with the consequences and not the act itself) but I don’t see a fundamental difference between abortion and any other form of birth control, including abstinence.

   When the necessary costs of creating more sentient beings are compensated for by the benefit, we should do so. The number of people who experience happiness isn’t directly important to me, if universe A has 100 people who experience a single point of pleasure each and universe B has 10 people who experience 20 points of pleasure each, I think universe B, which has more felt happiness, is preferable to universe A which has a greater number of happy people. Still, if only one sentient being in the universe exists and (s)he or it experiences the maximum possible amount of pleasure that a nervous system is capable of, the world would be an even better place with two equally happy people and even better with a trillion, if possible. If snapping my fingers would create an extremely happy sentient being who will not have a carbon footprint, not consume resources, not be a bully, rapist or murderer, not eat factory farmed meat or purchase products tested on animals or in any way directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, wrong others, in other words, if there was no cost to their existence, I think it would be wrong for me not to do so. To be consistent, a high enough amount of aggregated happiness caused as a result of creating these beings could compensate for the cost of my spending all of my free time bringing them into existence but, in real life, spending all of your reproductive years having and raising children probably would not.

   My hope is that future generations of humans will be genetically engineered with a strong disposition toward compassion, emotional resilience and cheerfulness, as well as stronger immune systems, increased lifespans and genius level IQs, genetic engineering could eliminate sadism, anti-social behavior, moral apathy and  primarily lifestyle based diseases and mental illness as well as genetic disorders. If suffering itself wouldn’t be entirely abolished, future humans might still have a drastically higher standard of living then the most well off people today. Alternatively, we could abandon biological reproduction and focus on designing compassionate, happy A.I who will multiply and colonize other planets if we don’t. As for non-human animals, I think we should genetically reprogram carnivores as herbivores or sterilize them if this isn’t possible. To deal with the overpopulation this might cause, herbivores should be ‘reprogrammed’  to have fewer offspring. Starvation in the wild might be handled by enabling animals to digest all plant material and we should genetically redesign them in the same ways that would benefit humans, to be more resistant to disease, less aggressive, less anxious and fearful, more altruistic and affectionate, maybe even increase their intelligence.