Matheny said your wife was a good ride.


Derek wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 18:52:18 GMT, Rudy Canoza > wrote:
>
>>Derek wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 16:09:08 GMT, Rudy Canoza > wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Matheny has another article: Expected Utility,
>>>>Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism. It's in the
>>>>Journal of Applied Philosophy, and is available in PDF
>>>>at http://www.veganoutreach.org/spam/thresholds.pdf
>>>>(requires the Adobe Acrobat reader).
>>>>
>>>>The task he has set himself is to take apart the
>>>>occasionally encountered omnivore's argument that a) he
>>>>doesn't personally kill the animals he eats, and b) his
>>>>meat consumption doesn't bring about the whole meat
>>>>industry, so "he" cannot be held accountable. Matheny
>>>>attempts to show that all meat eaters together are in
>>>>fact accountable for all the deaths of animals they
>>>>eat, based on expected utility considerations.
>>>>
>>>>His analysis is fair enough, and I don't have a problem
>>>>with it as far as it goes. What is curious, however,
>>>>is that it also links vegetarians to the collateral
>>>>deaths caused by the production of the crops they eat.
>>>
>>>No, it does not.
>>
>>Yes, it does.
>
>
> Ipse dixit and false. Show where Matheny's article links
> vegetarianism to the collateral deaths associated in crop
> production, and after you've done that show where his
> article concludes that the vegetarian is responsible for
> them.

His article doesn't explicitly do that. Based on my
extension of his mechanism, *I* did it. The expected
utility argument extends perfectly well to cover
"vegans" purchases of commercially grown produce, and
the deaths of animals in the field. Matheny didn't
need to cover it; I took care of it for him.

>
>
>>>The paper sets out to prove that, while
>>>some argue that act-utilitarianism cannot provide an
>>>adequate critique of buying meat, on the basis that a
>>>single meat purchase will not actually cause more farm
>>>animals to be raised or slaughtered, act-utilitarians
>>>cannot use actual utility as a decision procedure and
>>>must instead use expected utility to prescribe actions.
>>
>>Next time READ THE WHOLE PAPER
>
>
> I have read it,

You did not. You did cut-and-paste from the abstract.
You only read the abstract.

>
>>>that such a mechanism
>>>links vegetarians to the collateral deaths associated in
>>>crop production.
>>
>>Irrelevant.
>
>
> No, it is not.

Yes, it is irrelevant.

> Matheny doesn't show that such a mechanism
> links vegetarians to the collateral deaths caused by farmers
> in crop production.

It doesn't matter. He let the "expected utility" cat
out of the bag, and it ran right up and scratched your
claim of no responsibility to shreds.