Do you find many individual students that strongly support both? This seems like it might be one of those cases where there’s a vocal minority that support one (and not many opposing), and a vocal minority that support the other (and not many opposing) so that it feels like the group supports both, even though relatively few individuals do.
Given how near-universal speciesism is (generally over 90% of my students), significant overlap seems unavoidable in this case. My last poll showed almost 50% of students thinking that human extinction would likely be for the best, with ecological reasons being the most vocal/prominent justification offered; though some may have had other reasons.
This 2019 study also found that people don't seem particularly bothered by human extinction compared to other very bad outcomes: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50145-9. One of many reasons to be skeptical about choosing AI values via democratic poll.
In the spirit of agreeing (or sharing this emotion), we are so far from the frontier of reducing per-human harm to non-human animals that this--and not the difficult to influence size of the human population--seems to be where to start. Just like the best way to reduce humanity's climate damage is to reduce humanity's per-human climate damage.
I think it’s also because human extinction is a discussion in the abstract since nobody can actually bring it about or at least they do not think they can. If discussion of factory farming didn’t imply concrete changes like changing your diet and giving up tasty food, I think a lot more people would be against the practice. Similarly, I think if there actually was a button which if pressed would wipe out all humanity a lot of these people as in upward of 99% would certainly realise they don’t want to press that button.
I presume that different areas of the brain are being activated, in line with the view that there is no singular "moral agent" inside each skull. That's one of the strongest virtues of consequentialism: it can apply to a parliament, church, corporation, or society of mind.
Lots of ordinary people are not in the habit of thinking through the logical implications of their views. I remember when I was a child who thought he supported animal rights because I was against unpopular forms of animal cruelty, like dog fighting, or torturing or killing animals for no reason. The really crazy thing to me is that my younger self until he stumbled across the argument in the internet did not at any point. Think that this implied meet eating was objectionable, even though this seems like a straightforward implication of thinking animals should have rights against torture and death. That said I was pretty psychologically unusual since my response to reading the argument was pretty much agreeing with it and falling into a crisis of faith, which I’m pretty sure is not in fact the usual response.
Still, the point I am trying to make in a very roundabout way is that the people might not even have realised that their opinions when taken together imply this really absurd view and might change their opinion if you present it to them like this, although I suspect you already tried that. Still surely a lot of these people would change their opinion if they actually realise that supporting human extinction means you think conducting a bunch of genocides in quick succession. One after the other might be desirable if it lead to human extinction since that’s just doing human extinction in multiple steps. Also, I kind of expect concern for animals to be positively correlated with desire to protect the environment. Even if protecting the environment is actually bad for animals because concern for both seems to come from a similar place. Also, in my experience, lots of environmental messaging is rooted around concern for the wild animals. Okay on second thought, maybe I have too much faith in humanity and actually perhaps it turns out that all my predictions are way too optimistic.
Maybe the people who espouse both of these views don't literally mean to refer to all humans when they express these views? They probably don't mean "we should strongly favor humans over non-human animals", but "we should strongly favor *oppressed* humans over non-human animals"; and they probably don't mean "it would be a good thing if humanity went extinct, because we’re a scourge on the planet" but "It would be a good thing if *oppressors* went extinct, because *they're* a scourge on the planet".
So you could have an internally consistent ordering of "oppressed humans > nature = animals > oppressor humans", and people are just being sloppy about which groups they refer to?
Or maybe these people attach a lot of value to Nature, but not a lot of value to animals, so that they e.g., care about animal extinction more for aesthetic or similar reasons than because of the effect on the animals' lives. And farmed animals are not even part of Nature, really. Then you could perhaps consistently rank Nature > humans > (farmed) animals.
Either way, both of the two views you present are wrong on their own terms.
Philosophy undergrads are not ordinary. You’re selecting for a particular demographic — age, family income, verbal intelligence, aesthetic leanings — that is optimally calibrated to have stupid opinions.
50% of your students supported human extinction? That's absolutely insane. I would have considered 20% alarming.
In fairness, some said they would be "personally against" it, they just judged that it would be *impartially* best for the world.
I think it also probably isn't a real belief
Do you find many individual students that strongly support both? This seems like it might be one of those cases where there’s a vocal minority that support one (and not many opposing), and a vocal minority that support the other (and not many opposing) so that it feels like the group supports both, even though relatively few individuals do.
Given how near-universal speciesism is (generally over 90% of my students), significant overlap seems unavoidable in this case. My last poll showed almost 50% of students thinking that human extinction would likely be for the best, with ecological reasons being the most vocal/prominent justification offered; though some may have had other reasons.
This 2019 study also found that people don't seem particularly bothered by human extinction compared to other very bad outcomes: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50145-9. One of many reasons to be skeptical about choosing AI values via democratic poll.
In the spirit of agreeing (or sharing this emotion), we are so far from the frontier of reducing per-human harm to non-human animals that this--and not the difficult to influence size of the human population--seems to be where to start. Just like the best way to reduce humanity's climate damage is to reduce humanity's per-human climate damage.
I think it’s also because human extinction is a discussion in the abstract since nobody can actually bring it about or at least they do not think they can. If discussion of factory farming didn’t imply concrete changes like changing your diet and giving up tasty food, I think a lot more people would be against the practice. Similarly, I think if there actually was a button which if pressed would wipe out all humanity a lot of these people as in upward of 99% would certainly realise they don’t want to press that button.
I presume that different areas of the brain are being activated, in line with the view that there is no singular "moral agent" inside each skull. That's one of the strongest virtues of consequentialism: it can apply to a parliament, church, corporation, or society of mind.
Lots of ordinary people are not in the habit of thinking through the logical implications of their views. I remember when I was a child who thought he supported animal rights because I was against unpopular forms of animal cruelty, like dog fighting, or torturing or killing animals for no reason. The really crazy thing to me is that my younger self until he stumbled across the argument in the internet did not at any point. Think that this implied meet eating was objectionable, even though this seems like a straightforward implication of thinking animals should have rights against torture and death. That said I was pretty psychologically unusual since my response to reading the argument was pretty much agreeing with it and falling into a crisis of faith, which I’m pretty sure is not in fact the usual response.
Still, the point I am trying to make in a very roundabout way is that the people might not even have realised that their opinions when taken together imply this really absurd view and might change their opinion if you present it to them like this, although I suspect you already tried that. Still surely a lot of these people would change their opinion if they actually realise that supporting human extinction means you think conducting a bunch of genocides in quick succession. One after the other might be desirable if it lead to human extinction since that’s just doing human extinction in multiple steps. Also, I kind of expect concern for animals to be positively correlated with desire to protect the environment. Even if protecting the environment is actually bad for animals because concern for both seems to come from a similar place. Also, in my experience, lots of environmental messaging is rooted around concern for the wild animals. Okay on second thought, maybe I have too much faith in humanity and actually perhaps it turns out that all my predictions are way too optimistic.
Maybe the people who espouse both of these views don't literally mean to refer to all humans when they express these views? They probably don't mean "we should strongly favor humans over non-human animals", but "we should strongly favor *oppressed* humans over non-human animals"; and they probably don't mean "it would be a good thing if humanity went extinct, because we’re a scourge on the planet" but "It would be a good thing if *oppressors* went extinct, because *they're* a scourge on the planet".
So you could have an internally consistent ordering of "oppressed humans > nature = animals > oppressor humans", and people are just being sloppy about which groups they refer to?
Or maybe these people attach a lot of value to Nature, but not a lot of value to animals, so that they e.g., care about animal extinction more for aesthetic or similar reasons than because of the effect on the animals' lives. And farmed animals are not even part of Nature, really. Then you could perhaps consistently rank Nature > humans > (farmed) animals.
Either way, both of the two views you present are wrong on their own terms.
Tbf, when I read about the plight of animals in factory farms, I too echo ecological anti-human sentiments.
I hadn’t even noticed this trend. Though it seems vaguely right among my peers. Perhaps there is no single person who believes both?
See my response to Kenny!
> Teaching undergrads
There’s your problem
It's so fascinating (even if sometimes disturbing) to get a glimpse into what "ordinary people" think!
Philosophy undergrads are not ordinary. You’re selecting for a particular demographic — age, family income, verbal intelligence, aesthetic leanings — that is optimally calibrated to have stupid opinions.
What an odd view.