Ceteris Paribus Utilitarianism
Solving the measurement problem
First time here? I'm dabchick—unequal parts economist, philosopher, and mathematician, with an incurable habit of connecting dots and a Quixotic fantasy of being a renaissance man. After years of vanishing into online rabbit holes, I've developed a lust for thought and a preference for first-principles reasoning. Each week, I challenge myself to write, hoping that someone, somewhere, may marginally improve their world model. It may even be me. That’s what the comment section is for!
In an earlier post, I outlined our duties to non-linguistic (non-human) animals.
I am grateful for all the feedback I received on it. Given my Austrian roots, there were a few lines of argumentation that I felt were imperative to respond to—reconciling utilitarianism with the measurement problem, and relatedly, with subjective value theory. It is also an opportunity to further flesh out (no pun intended) my thoughts on the matter, and why I believe that you, yes you, should be vegan.
One could appeal to values that an interlocutor already holds, such as avoiding unnecessary harm to animals. If one can be assumed to hold such a value, it follows that one should at least try to be vegan. I will not make the empirical case here; readers are encouraged to examine the strength of the thesis themselves. Factory farming practices are monstrous, and the theory of consumer sovereignty dictates that production must follow consumers' demand(s). Thus, the hypothetical argument for veganism stands on solid ground. It is impossible to value animal welfare over trivial pleasures while simultaneously acting in defiance of those values.
The harder task would be to demonstrate that people ought to hold this value. I will not attempt to make a rigorous case here, but I do believe it is true. It seems cruel to subject sentient beings to lives of agony when alternatives for nutrition or taste are so readily available. The fallback always seems to be the argument from gustatory pleasure, but this is mere whim-worship. It is not fit for man, qua man, to give in to his base desires without second thought.
One may object that, on the margin, the suffering inflicted is "worth" the benefits of continuing animal product consumption. However, this is only true in the weak praxeological sense—the fact that people continue to eat meat despite knowing about the practices demonstrates this marginal valuation, but it does not follow that their values cannot be wrong. One could be mistaken about the costs and benefits of certain courses of action. Performing a rain dance may be "rational" in the formal, praxeological sense of the term, but it does not follow that it must therefore be rational in every sense. Additionally, people may persist in their habits without thinking through all the consequences.
Since almost everyone at least knows what veganism is, it is unlikely they have simply never considered it. It seems to me that everyone has given it some thought, but either dismissed or excused the moral concerns. I claim that most, if not all, of the rationalizations people use to avoid going vegan are ill-founded, and thus their actions are irrational. Given the premises of value that they do or ought to hold, their actions are misdirected.
Ceteris Paribus
The Latin phrase ceteris paribus (all other things equal) is surely familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of economics. I propose that the U4A thesis should be construed in ceteris paribus terms. This has the twofold consequence of answering both Austrian-flavoured objections together. In maxim form, Ceteris Paribus Utilitarianism for Animals, or CPU4A, reads as:
“In pursuing my ends I will, ceteris paribus, avoid causing harm to animals.”
What I will assume, outright, is that actively wanting to cause animals to suffer is immoral. Given a number of alternative courses of action to achieve some valued end, other things equal, one ought to choose a path of action that does not cause harm over one that does. Thus, animal harm would only be justified in cases where the downsides of the vegan alternative far outweigh the upsides.
The measurement problem is partially allayed by this move. There is no appeal to the "calculus of pleasure and pain," only an appeal to consider and exhaust non-violent alternatives first. This seems a reasonable enough ask of the interlocutor, and now I will demonstrate that if this is so, then there is a moral imperative to go vegan.
What could be a possible justification for overriding the imperative through the ceteris paribus clause? It is one that I have been struggling with myself ever since I decided to go vegan on February 1, 2025—cats.
Before going vegan, I was already buying cat food. I was in a dilemma—now that cats were depending on me, how could I continue being vegan while continuing to take care of them? There are no easy ways out; even in the EA forums, the issue is quite contentious. Unlike dogs, there is good reason to believe that cats will have trouble thriving on a vegan diet. The neutral-to-positive outcome data is largely anecdotal, and there are no good RCTs to tell us if the vegan substitutes are good enough to avoid severe issues like urine alkalization.
The path forward for me is uncomfortable, but clear—at present I have not built up sufficient trust with these cats to be able to take them to a vet frequently and check for urine alkalisation. The precautionary principle then prohibits me from turning them onto vegan cat foods such as Benevo, despite their claims of nutritional completeness. Perhaps one day feline supplementation will pass the threshold, and perhaps one day we will have the data to prove it, but it is not this day.
If this disqualifies me from calling myself a vegan, so be it. Ceteris Paribus Utilitarian is a good enough title for me, though admittedly quite a mouthful. There are indeed staunch vegans who believe that one should not keep cats precisely for this reason, some intrepid vegans who feed experimental vegan food to their cats nonetheless, and I imagine many like me with feline companions as their sole exception. I do hope we have definitive RCTs on the subject soon.
Pet food is still a smaller issue relative to diet, however. It is often made from animal by-products and thus contributes less (though still non-zero) to the demand for meat. It is similar to how whey is technically a by-product of cheese production that was repackaged as supplemental protein powder. It still contributes to demand and therefore production, but not as much. Additionally, cats are much smaller than humans and thus it requires far less meat to sustain them.
One way out of this dilemma is to offset the estimated harm by donating to animal welfare charities, as this article suggests for reluctant carnists as a halfway measure. I am considering doing this anyway to make up for not going vegan sooner.
The other cases where avoiding animal harm is near-impossible are trivial ones like travel, housing construction, agriculture, etc., which invariably involve harm to animals that cannot be avoided without stopping the process altogether. It is perhaps unfortunate that we live in such a world, but such is life. One may think that the agriculture argument excuses meat as well, but this is mistaken. Factory-farmed animals also need to be fed, and thus a lot more crops are grown to feed them relative to the scenario where the crops were directly consumed by humans. This is a necessary inequality. Thus the counter-example against the strict conception of animal rights also illustrates the validity of CPU4A.
Imperfections should not dissuade us from striving for what we know to at least be better. The inevitability of animal suffering due to human activity is no reason for us to wantonly torture and slaughter them when there are simple alternatives so readily available to us. All it takes is a bit more awareness of our consumer behaviour.
Closing the Escape Hatch
The feline dilemma illustrates the sharpness of the ceteris paribus assumption. Cats have a biological necessity that currently requires animal products—cetera non sunt paria. CPU4A continues the Blockian tradition of principled compromise and straddles the Kantian-consequentialist divide.
None of the other arguments against the strong formulation of the animal rights thesis cut against the CPU4A argument for veganism, either. Humans, unlike cats, are not “obligate carnivores” (there are issues with the phrase itself but let’s not digress) and do not require animal products to survive, even thrive, or maintain optimal health. The moral law still compels you. The only honest argument is the gustatory one, and de gustibus non est disputandum notwithstanding, mere whim is not a good enough reason to cause untold suffering to sentient beings. If there is an escape hatch at all, it must take the form of something objectively good for human life that cannot be replicated by alternatives. For every potential issue, however, there is a vegan workaround.
Even regarding matters of taste, there is a wide variety of delicious foods that are either already vegan or can easily be made vegan. It may surprise some people to know that Oreo cookies are vegan, for instance! In India however, due to enormous dairy subsidies, many foods that one would expect to be vegan are not. Many products contain “milk solids” to enhance the flavour and/or texture as a cheap filling, much like corn in the United States. Navigating veganism in India is a unique challenge, but it is quite tractable.
My strategy is essentially shifting the burden. Assuming the validity of the plausible CPU4A thesis, one must show why cetera non sunt paria, i.e. demonstrate what defeats the obligation toward veganism. For a while, I thought that I did have such defeaters, and continued merely wishing for a world where meat alternatives were readily available. However, I eventually realized that I already was living in such a world, and decided to try going vegan for a month, just to see how feasible it was. That was February 1, 2025. I have never looked back since, and my only regret has been that I did not go vegan sooner.
I have some idea of what your defeaters may be, but I would love to hear them so that, in next week’s piece, I can respond to that instead of merely my projection of what you all might say.
Thanks for reading! I read all the comments, so share your thoughts and/or share the essay!
It would probably be better to frame your formula in terms of pro tanto reasons; the ceteris paribus clause renders it toothless since no two situations are equal in every respect. But the real challenge is how to keep your formula from bleeding into everything. A pro tanto reason not to cause animal suffering, after all, is basically a reason not to spend money on anything. After all, whoever you give your money to might use that money to buy meat, in which case you'd have done something that caused animal suffering. So there's a pro tanto reason not to buy clothing, not to tip your waiter, and even not to buy vegan food from the local grocery store.
I think you make a lot of interesting moves here, but I’m still a bit muddled on the details of the proposal.
For two brief points:
1) Ceteris Paribus - it’s a devil of an idea. What actually constitutes equal? You say plant material can mirror taste for example, but is it *really* equal? Or is it equal *enough?* This matters only because, as a vague condition that primarily relies on intuition, it can be argued in both the loose or restrictive senses. It’s also not entirely clear what must be equal in ceteris paribus cases. It certainly won’t be everything about the two options, because they are different things! So, you might say nutrients must be equal, but why can’t I say “cultural value” or something like that must also be equal?
2) The utilitarian move still feels unmotivated to me. I understand that, from the prior article, you take the agent/patients distinction to call for the utilitarianism, but I don’t see why that has to be the case. Insofar as animals are moral patients, any harms done to them are wrong only by virtue of an agent being in the loop. This is contrary to the utilitarian thesis which suggests that the suffering caused is bad in and of itself. I need to see exactly what is wrong about the suffering, in what way, for what reason. Is it wrong because we ought not promote it for some distinctly human reason? Is it wrong simpliciter?
Patiently awaiting to see where you take this next!