I can't relate very much with your position, but I suppose it's much like the position of an atheist with regards to many philosophy of religion discussions which make certain religious or theistic assumptions which aren't shared by the atheist.

I don't agree that the sort of ethical question in your example doesn't make sense for most anti-realists. I think that those who would claim that it doesn't make sense are a minority. — Sapientia

Yeh that's a good example. There are many forms of anti-realism which have similar foundations to realist views, going along with them most of the way but having differences. It was much easier when I held by error theory. Now I don't think that morality should be thought of as principles at all, so when someone makes a statement about a moral rule it's hard to understand. What's their relationship to it, do they actually have this abstract rule which legislates their actions etc. There's something very bizarre about rationally deriving a rule and then having it control you. I've yet to hear someone say "I don't care at all about animals but it was proved to me that eating them is immoral, so I'm a vego". Yet people can debate the morality of eating meat without considering whether the other person cares about animals as relevant.

I think you got the point across. No need to publish a treatise on the subject. — Sapientia

Part of what I'm saying comes from Deleuze and Guatarri's "What Is Philosophy", so the treatise is already out there though the book is much more interesting than my post.

I like reading groups too though it's hard to keep up. Not enough people here read the by-month material seriously so it died. I'm about to fill a hole in my reading by reading Critique of Pure Reason if anyone's interested in a slow read. I never have understood this transcendent/al stuff so am giving it another go. — mcdoodle

I've been meaning to have a look at it again, got through about 1/3rd five years ago but my attitude was wrong, too critical. I'd be interested in CPR but I've always been bad with consistent reading/posting.

The forums have been very useful to me in a scattergun way. I'm back at college now at age 67, partly stimulated by the chat. But I steer clear of Ethics stuff mostly, both here and in academe , I don't relate to the debates. Ethics I try and do out in the world rather than talk about, based on my politics and a very simplified virtue system - do to others as you would be done by. But I dont eat meat schmik - I invented a veggie character in a story once and she convinced me :) (Sometimes tho bacon is decreed an honorary vegetable) — mcdoodle

For ethical reasons, I've been on and off vegan, vegetarian, kangatarian and various other diets which don't have names. I find it interesting that after a while the whole relationship with meat can change. At one point its just food and at another its a moral issue to deal with.

How did your your own character convince you of something?

Yeh reading groups seem good. I've never really taken part.

For sure, forums have been great for me, especially as a bounce off for further reading or just hearing about areas that may interest me. I'm not sure what ground rule would help on issues, it's not as if they have bad culture.

And yet I am able to tell a random person on the street who I know nothing about and who may not share my worldview that I find lying wrong, and he'll know just what I mean. Curious I can accomplish that there, but the OP can't do that here. — Hanover

Yes I (The OP) have some troubles with that. Of course they will know how to deal with you, I'm not making an argument that communication is impossible. Someone who wanted to engage with a philosophical discussion would have different issues. When you say 'lying is wrong' are you asserting that lying is wrong or stating your attitude? Do you intend it to have a truth value? Perhaps you mean that we have duty not to lie, or that you have been commanded not to lie by an authority. It could be that you hold by Sartrean ethics which I know nothing about. Are you asserting a rule not to lie, or roughly generalizing what you consider to be the best course of action. If it is a rule, does it subsist like matter? Discovered or created? Maybe you perceive it like people perceive secondary qualities, real but not subsisting in matter. If it's an attitude, is it an attitude that you project onto the world so that you actually experience it, or more like a taste? Is the best place to start our analysis to look at the language you use to express morality, or the phenomenology of moral experience? Has @Michael grilled you about the definition of ought yet?

Next thing someone tells you that there are no moral rules because nothing can get through the is-ought divide. But maybe to you there is no problem at all because we don't start off as subjects disconnected from the world; rather the world is always already imbued with value.

More likely someone tells you that lying doesn't always end up with the best consequences and discussion continues on indefinitely.

I am completely blind, I don't experience sight at all. But I can function just as well as someone who does see, in every way. If we hung out you wouldn't even notice I was blind.

What would you think of someone who made that claim?

Hey Apple, I think the reason why you come to the conclusion that there must be an 'end' point is that your thinking of infinity as a process. Pi - or 3.14... doesn't occur temporally, its not one digit coming after the other, rather 'pi' represents the whole thing at once. So there is no end or end + 1 point.

We can't escape being. The entities that we are comport ourselves towards our being, in fact we deliver ourselves over to our own being. Our being what-we are, as far as we can speak of it at all must be conceived of in terms of our being.

I will name my first born Toby (pronounced to-be).

Wow @Mongrel thanks for posting that clip. I saw the movie about 5 years ago and enjoyed it but I can't remember this scene and it really hits home. It's interesting that you focus on the external aspects of the situation, the murderer getting away with it, whilst this scene speaks to me almost entirely about the psychological aspects. As Ciceronianus mentioned the title echos Dostoevsky and I see this clip as an answer/reaction to Crime and Punishment.

***************************Large Spoilers for C&P follow.****************************

It's been a while since I've read C&P so this may not be the most accurate summary. In C&P Raskalnikov murders a pawnbroker and her sister. He has a moral theory which justifies the murders, something about great men being beyond moral codes. Even though he has this theory he is plagued by the murders, going in and out of fevers, in constant fear of being found out and feeling the desire to confess. In the end he eventually confesses and regrets his crime.

One of Dostoevsky's points is that we can create our own moral codes if we want, even disregard morality and become nihilists but we can't escape our human nature. Part of this nature is that we can't murder others and feel completely fine about it. Even if we are not punished by others, our punishment will be our inability to live with our actions.

This anecdotal summary of crimes and misdemeanors is directly speaking to that. This phrase may get thrown around too much, crimes and misdemeanors is from the perspective after the death of god. The man starts with the 'empty' universe in which he commits his crime, he doesn't even need to create a moral theory to justify it. The guilt that he feels is not because of a deep seated human nature but remnants of his childhood education, his fathers voice and a god that he has rejected are things of the past, a past time before gods death in his life. As such the guilt holds him for a little bit but then fades, there is no eye opening experience where he comes to realize a moral truth about the world. Finally in absence of god we don't recreate him to take responsibility and punish ourselves, we rationalize, deny and move on.

Too me that's the interesting aspect. From my world view it's entirely clear that people do crimes and get away with them. The 'chilling' aspect of the story is not that people can prosper from murder it's that the universe does not have an inbuilt 'just and moral' structure, we cannot violate the universe, it is empty and indifferent.

If some blah are mah
and all mah are grah.
Is it true that some blah are grah?
Is it actuality?

Until I claim that the sky is purple.

As to the Kripke example, the "ordinary man" using the name "Walter Scott" is in fact using it to refer to Walter Scott. The "ordinary man" is mistaken, however, in believing Wally wrote that most enchanting work Waverly. Why think anything else about such a situation? — Ciceronianus the White

Exactly, but then Russel's theory of description fails because 'Walter Scott' can not be replaced by 'the man who wrote Waverly'.
Edit: For clarity, if 'Walter Scott' has the same meaning to someone as 'the man who wrote Waverly' then that would imply that when they use the name 'Walter Scott' they mean - the man who wrote Waverly - so they mean Schmidt. But as you said, this isn't the case.

By the way, is the "ordinary man" referred to by philosophers a kind of cousin of the "reasonable man" we lawyers like so much? My guess would be he isn't, as the philosophers' "ordinary man" seems to be considered a dimwit and the "reasonable man" by definition is not. — Ciceronianus the White

As I mentioned Kripke's example was about Godel instead of Walter Scott. In the context the ordinary man is one who only know that Godel created/discovered the incompleteness theory, and knows nothing else about Godel.
So here 'ordinary man' means someone who knows only that Walter Scott was the author of Waverly and knows nothing else about him. Then the only description that can be use to pick him out is that he is the author of Waverly. The ordinary man is not dim, he just doesn't spend his spare time reading about the life of Walter Scott.

So just looking at names:

Sir Walter Scott is not.
The author of Waverly is not.
Either each thing failed to write Waverly or two or more things wrote Waverly.

Suppose that Walter Scott was not in fact the author of Waverly. A man named Schmidt whose body was found in Vienna under mysterious circumstances many years ago, actually did the work in question. His friend named Walter Scott somehow got hold of the manuscript and it was thereafter attributed to Walter Scott. On this view then when the ordinary man uses the name 'Walter Scott' he really means to refer to Schmidt, as Schmidt is the unique person satisfying the description 'the man who wrote Waverly' — Kripke

*I switched out Godel for Walter Scott to make this work.

By description theory, saying Sir Walter Scott is not, would then be actually saying that Schmidt is not. But that's not really the way that language works. I only dabble in analytic philosophy so there may be defenses to description theory after Kripke. Given that I find Kripke fairly convincing Quines argument against the ontological commitment of names falls through.
He does have the back of using the verb 'is-Walter Scott' but I don't buy it (I could be convinced).

Walter Scott is not.
There is no person who performs the action of being Walter Scott. ??

Like Quine I want to meaningfully use names without granting that there are entities allegedly named. But what's the argument?

Honestly @Postmodern Beatnik I'm just exhausted by the conversation. Everything is such a fight with it. I wouldn't mind if the fights were about the overall points or the arguments I'm making but they're often not.

The problem is that the example is bad. — Postmodern Beatnik

Fine replace it with debeaking, I don't care, it doesn't effect the argument at all. Is it really relevant whether letting a couple cows out in the afternoon is considered a personal practice or a farming practice?
Maybe you see this as clarification, to me it comes off petty and irrelevant. There are productive ways of clarifying arguments and unproductive ways. If your going to write most a paragraph explaining how I was incorrect by not placing the words 'food consumption' in between the words 'non-vegan practices', when the actual point was entirely clear to you, well...
Maybe we will have better luck in another thread.

And yes, much of this particular thread felt like sparring.

Edit: Btw, in the other thread you pretty much didn't disagree with me at all.

If the example isn't evidence (even if just by way of illustration), then what was the purpose of presenting it? — Postmodern Beatnik

Well I was speaking to Soylent who asked me to explain what I meant by too strong, so it makes sense to give a weak example.

Well could you think of another possible way that some gratuitous suffering could be prevented? I could name many that would even have a closer relationship to the suffering of animals. A farmer letting two of his cows out into a field one afternoon, even though he normally doesn't do so, is enough to defeat the bi conditional. That's what I mean by too strong, it argues that the are no other ways to prevent any of the animals gratuitous suffering. — me

Of coarse I didn't expect anyone to interpret me as saying that if a farmer letting 2 of his cows out into the field on one occasion doesn't reduce their suffering during the food production process, then my argument falls apart. It makes no sense to interpret it that way.

First of all, charity does not require us to interpret a claim in a way that makes it true at all costs. — Postmodern Beatnik

Of course not, actually I think most the claims to charity in this thread are garbage, if an argument has 2 interpretations both of which are problematic (in much the same ways) then neither of them is considered the charitable one.

Second, you don't actually mean if you have any non-vegan practices.I sleep every night, and my sleeping at night does not contribute to gratuitous suffering caused by food production. But that clearly does not disprove (or in any way undermine) the claim. What you mean is something like "non-vegan food consumption practices." — Postmodern Beatnik

Now this is covered by the principal of charity, it's not even worth bringing up. Anyway I didn't realize that vegans don't sleep, that sleeping was a non-vegan practice.

So now that we have dispensed with the obligatory sparring, you agree that my point needs to be addressed in the context of this argument, good.

Of course I am going after the example. The example was your evidence, so the point doesn't stand if the evidence for it isn't any good. — Postmodern Beatnik

Um, no it's not. It's a rhetorical device whereby the example given is very weak to show that the conditions for the claim being false are easily satisfied. It's the same as saying, 'even Brian could work out what I meant in that example'. A charitable reading would not argue that the example is false but rather look at what the argument is implying.

I am saying that we should understand P6 as claiming that so long as we have not adopted a vegan diet, some of our preventable contribution to the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices remains. — Postmodern Beatnik

But this isn't a charitable way of reading the argument, it is false if I have any non vegan practices which don't contribute to gratuitous suffering caused by food production. I wrote this exact thing in the post above. For example dumpster diving some of my food, eating at a party; eating the leftovers that my housemate is about to throw out; eating some chocolate you find on the street; having a sip of your friends hot chocolate; chances are that buying meat from a supermarket doesn't have an effect either etc. (think of your own example if you think those are problematic). If I cut out everything but these behaviors then I am not vegan and none of my preventable contribution remains.

Needed some pics for my tinder profile:

@Postmodern Beatnik
Just for extra clarity, if you look back on the thread after this quote:

But the choice is not between reading P6 as meaning "by everyone" or "just by one person." If the reading is "by anyone who is in a position to," as I suggested, that is going to be a very large number of people. So the fact that you cannot change your local supermarket's buying patterns alone is irrelevant. And if it were true that a vegan diet ought to be adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so, then it wouldn't matter whether or not other people will in fact do so. All that would matter is whether or not any given individual was in a position to adopt a vegan diet.

Read the responses to this as if I had interpreted it to be maintaining a version of the argument. The version that used the incorrect move from speaking about the set as a whole to speaking about the elements.
Then when you said all implies some, I took that as you reaffirming that incorrect version.
Maybe then you'll see why people have responded to you by bringing up this issue, and get a different picture of how the thread progressed.

Hey @Michael yeh pretty much all your posts were along the same lines as what I was arguing.

Maybe things would be hurried along somewhat if we can agree that all the sentences bellow mean the same thing.

I'm not sure. Consider: — Michael

I agree that some follows from all generally. — shmik

It depends on whether you mean "all" in the logical sense or not. — Postmodern Beatnik

@Postmodern Beatnik
We all agree that: All birds can fly -> some birds can fly.
Neither me nor Michael are arguing that this is not the case. The examples we are presenting are not meant to be counter examples to this. They are meant to be analogous to Soylents argument. So when you say that the examples have errors you are just agreeing with the point.

The problem comes when speaking about the elements of the set and the set itself. As in Michaels example:

All Ys ought to save X.
Each element of the set Y ought to save X

X can be saved iff all Ys donate.
X can be saved iff the entire set Y donate

Therefore all Ys ought to donate.
Therefore the entire set Y ought to donate

Therefore some Ys ought to donate. — Michael

As mentioned this is problematic and it's not meant to be a counter example to some following from all. It's meant to be analogous to a version of the argument which from looking at Soylents posts, he upholds, even though you yourself think the version is problematic. The problem of switching between talking about the set X and talking about the elements of the set i.e the set of all natural numbers is infinitely large does not imply that some of the natural numbers are infinitely large.

So I think a distinction needs to be made between "the set of people S is X" and "each member of the set of people S are X". — Michael

I've already made this point myself, so I'm not sure how this constitutes a response to anything I've said. — Postmodern Beatnik

Because this is the motivation behind the discussion against Soylents version of the argument. Again, you are fighting an invisible battle to prove that all -> some while we are speaking about the distinction between the set and the members of the set.

All it requires is that one's contribution cannot be fully eliminated without adopting a vegan diet. — Postmodern Beatnik

So there are numerous ways to read P6 (again, because it was created in such a vague way). You here are presenting a reading that all of the personal contribution is preventable iif a vegan diet is adopted. I was interpreting it as some of the personal contribution is preventable iff a vegan diet is adopted.
Again there is a trade off between these two positions. If you read it as all then P6 will be false for any person that has a non vegan practice which does not contribute to gratuitous suffering. The example I gave earlier was of a person who dumpster dived all their meat, this is relevant if P6 means some. If you read P6 as all then it is enough for someone to dumpster dive only 10% of thier meat and it will still be false when talking about them as they only needs to reduce the other 90% (the practices that contribute to suffering) for their entire contribution to be preventable.

But yeh I don't disagree that if you read it as all then its not a problem if some of the contribution is preventable without her going vegan.

But then it's not your contribution. It may be the case that boycotting a farm could result in the farmer changing his practices. But your example of the farmer making a personal decision to let two of his cows out one afternoon has only to do with his contribution. Your contribution (or at least, the relevant portion of your contribution given the additional stipulations Soylent has made on this thread) comes from factors that you can personally control (including, but not limited to, the demand you add to the market). — Postmodern Beatnik

This is pretty weird, trying to separate your contribution from the farming practices. So I am buying my meat from a local farm that uses factory farming practices. I contribute to demand from this farm which causes animals gratuitous suffering. The farm then decides to go organic and try to create an environment without gratuitous suffering, meanwhile I continue to buy meat from it. Are you arguing that at first I had a contribution, then that contribution disappeared, but also that it was not my contribution it was the farmers? Doesn't really add up. Your contribution is contributing demand in a farm that causes gratuitous suffering. You can't detach the personal contribution from the practices of the supplier.
If you argue that letting a couple cows out one evening isn't part of farming practices, just the farmers whim, then you are going after the example, not my main point.

P6 isn't about gratuitous suffering simpliciter, though. It's about gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices. Letting the cows out one afternoon doesn't stop them from being slaughtered and processed for food. And while it may give them some pleasure, it doesn't prevent their eventual suffering. — Postmodern Beatnik

I am speaking about food production. The vast majority of gratuitous suffering during food production is a result of farming practices before the animals are slaughtered. I doubt that I am the only person who believes that even small changes in farming practices such as removing some of the confinement of the animals is enough to prevent some suffering. Some of your contribution can be preventable by changes in the practices of your supplier.

Or at least, you misunderstand me enough that you can't be sure. — Postmodern Beatnik

True I do have a lot of trouble constructing a coherent position from your posts.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "too strong". It's strong insofar as it establishes a one-to-one relationship between the means and ends of an action. If another action can be substituted for the adoption of veganism by the individual, the bi-conditional is defeated since it explicitly states the only means for preventing gratuitous suffering is the adoption of veganism by the individual (hence objection ii). — Soylent

Well could you think of another possible way that some gratuitous suffering could be prevented? I could name many that would even have a closer relationship to the suffering of animals. A farmer letting two of his cows out into a field one afternoon, even though he normally doesn't do so, is enough to defeat the bi conditional. That's what I mean by too strong, it argues that the are no other ways to prevent any of the animals gratuitous suffering. It argues that someone who had been dumpster diving for his meat would have an affect on animal suffering if he became vegetarian because it can't allow that there are any individuals whose veganism has no effect.

Too say that some people have an effect is a weaker claim that all people have an effect.

Hey Soylent, much of the posts in the other thread are taken up with the point that P6 must be speaking about the result of individual action rather than collective action for the argument to work. It needs to mean that each individuals (from the set of people who can go vegan) adoption of veganism has an affect on the gratuitous suffering. I'm pretty certain both me and Postmodern Beatnik agree on that but it seems that we misunderstand each other often enough that I can't be sure.

Two objections come to mind: i) the individuals obligation adoption of veganism is ineffective at preventing gratuitous suffering and ii) the collective obligation adoption of veganism is effective at preventing gratuitous suffering. If either is true, the biconditional is defeated. — Soylent

When written like this, which is the way P6 is written (ii) is not a problem. As long as each persons adoption of veganism is effective at preventing suffering the biconditional holds (here the collective can be viewed as a group of individuals).

A charitable reading can grant that i) is false, the individual obligation can prevent gratuitous suffering — Soylent

If you go by this then I think this 'issue' with P6 is solved.

I don't really understand what that has to do with a charitable reading though. I view P6 as stating a fact about the world which can either be true or false. I believe it is false because the biconditional is too strong. That said there are ways to fix it up, I've mentioned one using statistics. Another could be to hold that an individual has an obligation even if he doesn't know whether his specific actions will have an effect. Either of these allow you to replace the biconditional with something weaker and still get an obligation as your conclusion.

You seem to be confused. All I was saying with the point about charity is that the one interpretation is obviously not what was intended that there's no real threat to the argument's validity. — Postmodern Beatnik

OK, maybe you don't realize that its unpleasant when someone implies that your posts rely on uncharitable interpretations and that it comes across condescending when you then post a link to the principle of charity.

Then you are definitely confused because I haven't endorsed (1)
or (2). — Postmodern Beatnik

OK for now this part doesn't really matter as we have been talking past each other. We could argue about how legitimate my belief was that you were using one interpretation instead of another but it's pretty pointless.

Then you seem to be contradicting yourself. Your original complaint was that the original version of P6 is ambiguous. You then claimed that P6 with the "anyone who is in a position to" clause tacked on is also ambiguous. But P6 with the "anyone who is in a position to" clause tacked on gets us "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so." If this is ambiguous—and your entire argument is based on the claim that it is—then "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who can adopt it" is also ambiguous (as it is essentially the same claim). — Postmodern Beatnik

Maybe I have somewhere, who knows?
P6. gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet. Is ambiguous. Writing that this applies to anyone who is in a position to do so is also ambiguous.

P6. gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so. Is unambiguous, it means that gratuitous suffering... iff everyone who can go vegan does go vegan. The fact that you implied that you were endorsing a P6 with 'anyone who is in a position to do so' tacked on was one of the main reasons I thought you were using the interpretation that implied that collective action was necessary. I actually addressed this point in:

There is some ambiguity in the terms. Maybe you could rewrite P6 in a way that incorporated your 'by anyone who is in a position to'.
'Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who is in a position to', specifically excludes some (only if). If you mean it in the way: let X be the set of anyone who can go vegan, and V the set of vegans, ∀ x ∈ X, gratuitous suffering is preventable iff x ∈ V. Then that isn't true if there is a single individual whose capable of becoming vegan but whose contribution does not have an effect, which was the original concern. — shmik

To which you didn't reply.
Edit: The reason I asked you to explicitly rewrite P6 was to see if you were just tacking it on to the end since knowing if you were would clear up the ambiguity.

P6 Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted — Soylent

But when there are two interpretations and one of them has no problems, you assume the one with no problems is the one that was intended. It's called the principle of charity. — Postmodern Beatnik

Interesting that you frame the discussion like this considering my first and second posts state that there is an ambiguity, assume that interpretation (2) is the one that Soylent means and suggest a way to patch up the argument so that interpretation (2) works.

It's true that in my conversation with you I have taken (1) as your interpretation but this is the most charitable interpretation (of your posts).

But the choice is not between reading P6 as meaning "by everyone" or "just by one person." If the reading is "by anyone who is in a position to," as I suggested, that is going to be a very large number of people. So the fact that you cannot change your local supermarket's buying patterns alone is irrelevant. And if it were true that a vegan diet ought to be adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so, then it wouldn't matter whether or not other people will in fact do so. All that would matter is whether or not any given individual was in a position to adopt a vegan diet. — Postmodern Beatnik

This is clearly false under interpretation (2) being that interpretation (2) is false if there is one person whose independently going vegan has no effect. As such instead interpretation (1) is the charitable one. If you can find a way to make this quote work for interpretation (2) I'm happy to hear it.

Also, I don't think you have formulated the first option correctly. What you've written is the ambiguous formulation itself. Your (1) should be: "Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is simultaneously adopted by everyone who can adopt it." But of course, it is obvious that this is not what the argument intends to assert once this interpretation is made explicit. So while I can agree that this interpretation would cause problems, I don't see any reason to read it into the argument. — Postmodern Beatnik

The way I have written it is unambiguous, the only thing that could be ambiguous is the timing of each persons adoption.

I'm pretty sure that this is all because of a ambiguity in P6 as I mentioned above.
There are 2 interpretations.
1) Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who can adopt it.

2) For each individual who can go vegan, their contribution to gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if they adopt veganism.

I initially though that you meant 1, which has the analogue of the soccer argument. This is because the bi-conditional here means that the entire group needs to adopt veganism for the gratuitous suffering to be preventable.
If you meant 2 then I agree there is no problem going from all to some and the argument is fine (besides for the many premises I disagree with).

Can we agree to that? Do you see where I have been coming from?
One reason I wanted clarity in the first place is that I think the argument can easily sneak in logic such as: if everyone does X it will be good, therefore everyone should do X, therefore each individual should do X regardless of what others do. I'm guessing we agree that this would be invalid we just disagreed about whether it was happening (because of different readings of P6).

Sure. But the biconditional is not the end of the story. It's a premise, and all that matters for the topic of this conversation is whether or not it does its job as a premise. Strictly speaking, worrying about whether or not it is true is a topic for the associated discussion. Nor does it matter that nothing is said about (X & Y & ¬Z). The point of P6 is just to be part of the antecedent in P9 (and, originally, to get us P7).

So with P9 and C5 all we can say is that the set of people who can go vegan should go vegan (as a set). The argument can almost never claim that any individual should go vegan. — shmik

But again, "some" follows from "all." If all x ought to P, then x1 ought to P. — Postmodern Beatnik

I agree that some follows from all generally.

Essentially this is what I see as happening here. Let's take a situation where Brian has 21 friends and soccer is 'the good'.
I can say 'Brian you ought to go to the park to play soccer'. To which Brian replies that no one is in the park and he needs another 21 people to play the game. He claims that the good is not achieved unless there are 22 people in the park to playing soccer. I then reply, 'Brian you ought to go to the park and all your friends ought to go with you'.
Now with some trick we can say Brian ought to go to the park, even though none of his friends are there and the situation is unchanged.

That's the same move I see happening, you require the group in order for P6, then switch back to the individual in P9. But P9 is only justified if it is fulfilled by the group as per P6.

There is some ambiguity in the terms. Maybe you could rewrite P6 in a way that incorporated your 'by anyone who is in a position to'.
'Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who is in a position to', specifically excludes some (only if). If you mean it in the way: let X be the set of anyone who can go vegan, and V the set of vegans, ∀ x ∈ X, gratuitous suffering is preventable iff x ∈ V. Then that isn't true if there is a single individual whose capable of becoming vegan but whose contribution does not have an effect, which was the original concern.

Hey Soylent I think you are getting me wrong here. I am not invested in the argument and have myself been vegan for some years of my life. I like the technical aspects of arguments which is why I am writing.

The problem with P6 is about thresholding. Repeating from my earlier post. There is a high chance that any individual purchase of meat I make from a supermarket will have literally zero effect. This is because in order for my purchase or lack of purchase to have an effect the supermarket must realize that it needs more or less meat. If they are selling 1000 kg a day, they won't even notice that I have stopped purchasing, therefore they won't change their order from the butcher and the butcher won't purchase less from the farm etc. We can think of this in thresholds, lets say the supermarket us purchasing an order of 7000kg per week. If they sell more than 6500kg of that then the next week they purchase 8000kg, if they sell less than 6500 then the next week they purchase only 6000kg. In this system, in order to make a difference to the animals your steak dinner must be the one that causes the supermarket to surpass the 6500kg mark.

We can treat this by introducing probability, by saying something like there is a very small chance that your small purchase will cause the supermarket to exceed it's threshold, but if it does cause that then it will be responsible for the super market making a very large extra purchase of meat.

P6 does not work for an individual without something like this.

I honestly do believe that the subject of the argument is significant, if it was referring to everyone then there would be no issue with thresholding. But then, as I mentioned P8 may end up being too strict for your taste.

Not quite, I'm saying that if P6 refers strictly to an individual then I think it is unsound. This is because each individual does not necessarily play a contributory role in causing suffering. If we can agree that there exist one individual whose decision to become vegan would not effect the amount of animal suffering, then the if and only if is false.

My other issue is the formal one about the argument. If as Postmodern Beatnik suggests P6 is the set of all people for whom its possible to go vegan, then you cannot conclude that any individual ought go vegan.
Looking at it closer the problem is with P9.

P9 If it is wrong to allow gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices, and gratuitous suffering caused by food productions practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted, then a vegan diet ought to be adopted. — Soylent

If P6 refers to a set, then P9 should be:
P9 If it is wrong to allow gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices, and gratuitous suffering caused by food productions practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted (by the set referred to in P6), then one ought to ensure that a vegan diet is adopted by the set referred to in P6.

There is no justification in any of the argument which would allow us to conclude in P9 that one ought to ensure that a vegan diet is adopted by a subset of the set described in P6.

Edit: Both of these objections apply before the ought is encountered in the argument. It's not tragedy of the commons if I object to P6 by saying that it is false if it is referring to a single subject, or that the argument is invalid if P6 refers to a set of subjects. Are you making the claim that P6 is sound for an individual subject?

That depends on the person. Not everyone gets their food from a supermarket or a restaurant. — Postmodern Beatnik

Which is my point, it depends on the subject.

But the choice is not between reading P6 as meaning "by everyone" or "just by one person." If the reading is "by anyone who is in a position to," as I suggested, that is going to be a very large number of people. So the fact that you cannot change your local supermarket's buying patterns alone is irrelevant. And if it were true that a vegan diet ought to be adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so, then it wouldn't matter whether or not other people will in fact do so. All that would matter is whether or not any given individual was in a position to adopt a vegan diet. — Postmodern Beatnik

I disagree that this follows from the premises. I think it very much does matter what whether or not other people adopt a vegan diet. We are claiming in 6 that if every element of the set of people who can go vegan, do go vegan, then we will achieve a desired outcome. This speaks about one specific situation and says nothing about the outcome of any other distribution of veganism within the set. Effectively we have a statement like: if X&Y&Z then T. Nothing is said about X&Y&~Z.

So with P9 and C5 all we can say is that the set of people who can go vegan should go vegan (as a set). The argument can almost never claim that any individual should go vegan. The only claim the argument could legitimately make is that if everyone else who could go vegan, did go vegan then I should participate in it. Otherwise there is a slide from then group as a whole to individuals which cannot be justified without extra premises.
As an example: if it were the case that my going vegan now increased the suffering of animals, the argument would be unaffected.

For the sake of discussion, do you have any suggestions to solve the problem you brought up, or do you think it's beyond repair? — Soylent

By anyone who is in a position to, I would think. There are two ways to go about this: rewording the argument to make it explicitly apply only to those who are in a position to adopt a vegan diet, or to leave it as is and accept that it is only applicable to those who are in a position to adopt a vegan diet. Moreover, I do not think that "adopted by all" is the natural reading here in part because the elimination of all suffering cannot possibly be the goal here. In fact, considering this might lead us to think that the "by those who are in a position to" condition is already built into the argument: it may not count as known and preventable gratuitous suffering if one is not in a position to avoid inflicting it. — Postmodern Beatnik

The problem is that P6 is not necessarily true depending on the subject. As far as I can tell it comes closest to being true when everyone adopts a vegan diet. There is no direct link between the person who eats the animal and the treatment of the animal. It could well be that my going vegan does not have any effect on the animals that are farmed, chances are my super market is not going to order less meat because I am no longer buying from them.
That would be something that needs to be addressed before P6 can be assumed unless P6 does mean 'by everyone'. One method to go about this that I have seen is to say that there is a small chance of your particular purchase effecting the super market purchasing, but if it is the one then it will cause a large change in the purchasing i.e. if a supermarket buys chicken in lots of 1000 kg then your 1kg will almost certainly not cause the supermarket to by an extra 1000, but it might. Relying on an argument like that would loosen the argument in the OP.

Hey @Soylent, I think the changes recommended by @Postmodern Beatnik are an improvement to P7 & P8 but there is still something wrong with them, they, including P6 don't have a subject.

P6 Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted.

Adopted by whom? The obvious answer 'if it's adopted by everyone' is problematic as then P8 would need to be a strong statement 'it is possible for everyone' something that you probably don't want the argument to hinge on.

• I find new books more attractive than something that I'm part way through reading, so I often don't finish books.
• I'm not thorough enough to go into the nitty-gritty and will often move on once I've got a general grasp of a philosophers ideas.
• I get bored when reading some philosophers (especially analytic phils). For example I can get through about 5 pages of Searle before I doze off. I like a lot Nagel's ideas but I can't force myself to read him. There's something about flowery language that I'm used to, or just having to work a bit to understand the sentences. Part of this isn't a weakness as I think that style is important when it comes to enjoying philosophy.
• I forget whole books of philosophy. If I read the book more than 6 months ago it's likely that I can only remember a couple dot points about it.
• I have a constant pull push relationship with nihilism.
• I find TGWs comments in this thread hilarious.

I have a friend with no sense of smell but she can taste everything fine.

I don't find the radically contingent world to be dreary. Dreariness, isolation, suffering and other unpleasantness are part of the world (among other aspects some of which are pretty neat), not based on its metaphysical foundations. Talk of a striving will or any other metaphysical ground are just stories and abstractions. It wouldn't be any different if it was turtles all the way down.
I guess it would be dreary if in the search for foundations you negated the world itself. Our mental image of a foundationless world can be unpleasant but again that's just a story we are telling. The solipsistic story doesn't have trumps over the story I build about the world through my interaction with others. There's something very absurd about the thought of sitting down with a friend to discuss whether the lack of metaphysical grounding implies that in reality you are not connecting with each other at all.

I find it difficult to assess whether the striving will is more unpleasant because I can't relate to it.

Sounds great, looking forward to it.

Thanks for the advice, it's unfortunate that I'm attracted to books which can be difficult. I don't really want to spend 3 months bashing my head against it and going nowhere. For yourself did you find it worth the effort?

Damn I was hoping it would only be a hard book. I haven't started yet, for now I'm looking for ways to approach it. I'm part way through Nietzsche and Philosophy which to be honest has not been a walk in the park. Also I've grabbed Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide - James Williams, from the library and plan to read it before hand.

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Decided to give Difference and Repetition a go as a summer project. Not sure how long I'll stick with it. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.