0:09

Hi, welcome to the Origins Podcast.

0:11

I'm your host, Lawrence Krauss. Peter

0:14

Singer is one of the foremost philosophers

0:16

of our time, and I'm really happy he agreed

0:18

to spend time with me in a

0:21

fascinating dialogue for this week's podcast.

0:25

I had the opportunity a number of years ago,

0:27

six or seven years ago, to appear with Peter on stage,

0:30

and that appearance changed the way I

0:32

thought about the world. And so I was really

0:34

happy to be able to have him back,

0:37

specifically on the republication of

0:40

his famous book, the 1975 book,

0:42

Animal Liberation, has been rewritten

0:45

substantially by Peter,

0:47

and it's called Animal Liberation Now. And

0:49

I wanted to spend time talking about that. Peter

0:54

was one of the first people to make popular

0:56

the idea that animals other than

0:58

human beings have rights, particularly

1:00

the rights not to suffer, and equal

1:03

consideration of interests, as he called it, should

1:05

be applied to the

1:07

entire animal kingdom, if possible.

1:10

And he lives by the way he speaks.

1:14

He's a vegetarian and a vegan.

1:17

And I remember his

1:20

discussions of factory farming

1:23

of chickens and meat, even back

1:25

then years ago, was enough to make me rethink

1:28

the way I ate. It took me a while, but

1:31

I'm happy to say that now I'm a vegetarian. And

1:33

again, he

1:34

talks about in the new

1:37

book and in our discussion, the

1:39

fact that factory farming

1:41

hasn't really changed. And even

1:43

though I live surrounded by

1:46

the sea, what I hadn't realized was that it was

1:48

a fishing of fish actually also. Not

1:50

only causes trauma for the fish in an

1:53

obvious way, but maybe more obvious,

1:55

more than obvious when you think about factory

1:57

farming of fish, but takes resources

1:59

for the

1:59

the fact that salmon have to be fed

2:02

fish, farmed salmon have to be fed fish

2:04

that could otherwise feed other people. And

2:07

of course, now the question of climate change

2:09

has become very important. So we talked

2:11

about all

2:14

of these things and more. I

2:16

wanted to, as I do in Origins podcasts,

2:18

to talk about Peter's origins

2:21

and what got him into philosophy in the first place.

2:24

And he's a remarkable human being and it's

2:26

a wonderful discussion. He's passionate

2:28

about these ideas and will confront

2:30

some of the ideas you may have about

2:33

animal rights, in fact, and animal

2:35

sentience. And I hope to get you thinking

2:38

at least about the

2:40

way you deal with the world. In

2:43

addition, of course, to his work on animal

2:46

liberation, he's written

2:48

seminal books on effective altruism,

2:50

on how to most effectively

2:53

do good in the world. And again, he

2:55

lives by that, giving

2:57

a significant fraction of his own salary to

3:00

effective charitable causes. And we talked

3:02

about that discussion. I think

3:05

listening to the discussion with Peter

3:07

Singer may indeed change the way

3:09

you think about the world for the better, if not

3:11

at least get you asking questions about the world,

3:14

which is really one of the points of the Origins podcast.

3:17

So I really hope you'd enjoy our discussion

3:19

together. And of course, you can watch it

3:21

ad-free on our Substack site,

3:23

Critical Mass, or you can wait and watch

3:25

it on YouTube or listen to it on

3:27

any of the standard podcast

3:30

listening sites. And

3:32

I hope I'll be able to see some

3:34

of you a few weeks from now, or

3:36

maybe a week from now by the time this appears in

3:41

Los Angeles, in Orange County,

3:44

for my lecture there at the Bowers

3:46

Museum, and then two days later

3:49

in San Diego. That's October 15th and October

3:51

17th. Go to the originsproject.org

3:53

website if you want to get tickets, and

3:56

there's VIP tickets for our reception

3:58

beforehand for both. I'll be finding some

4:00

books. And in San Diego,

4:03

I'll be having a discussion with

4:05

Brian Keating for his podcast and

4:07

my podcast. So if you live in the

4:10

Southern California area or you feel like visiting

4:12

at that time, I hope you'll come out then for our

4:14

Origins events, all of which go to support

4:17

the programming that we can do in the Origins Project. Thanks

4:19

again. And with no further ado, Peter

4:22

Singer.

4:31

Well, Peter, thanks so much for joining me. It's

4:33

been a while since we've been together. I think the last...

4:35

I can't remember the last time I may have been in Mexico, I think,

4:38

but I saw you. But it's

4:40

always a pleasure to spend time with you and

4:42

to learn from you. So thanks for spending the

4:44

time today. Thank

4:45

you, Bob. Thanks for inviting me on the show.

4:48

It's a great chance

4:50

to have... The

4:53

new version of the book, which I

4:55

want to talk about in many ways, had

4:58

an impact on my life, has come out and it gave

5:00

me a good chance to be able to read the new version.

5:03

That's the great thing about doing the podcast. I

5:07

might have gotten it, but to read it in depth, it motivated

5:10

me. It's like a book club.

5:12

You have to read it, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,

5:14

book clubs, you can sometimes finesse it, but I think

5:16

if you're doing a podcast, at least in my opinion, I have

5:18

to actually know what it says. And

5:22

I want to focus for the most part on

5:25

the new version, which is remarkable. But

5:28

I want to... We

5:31

spent time on stage together once

5:34

along a very pleasant conversation

5:37

we had in front of a few thousand people once in Phoenix.

5:41

But I don't remember going into your origins as

5:43

much as I do now. And since it's the Origins podcast,

5:46

I really like to know what got people

5:48

to where they are. And so I want to spend

5:50

the first part of this conversation

5:53

talking about that. I've looked at your bio and

5:56

learned some things that I didn't

5:58

know before, that your family... from Vienna.

6:00

Is that right? We're sort of refugees

6:03

from Hitler? That's correct. Yes, my

6:05

parents left as soon as they could

6:07

after Hitler took over Austria.

6:10

Well, they were bringing astute to leave when

6:12

they did, but not all of your family left in

6:15

time. No, no. And it's a fairly

6:17

common story that the younger generation

6:19

left because they saw that they had no future.

6:21

You know, I don't think they were really contemplating

6:24

that they would be murdered, but economically

6:27

they had no future.

6:29

Jews could not own businesses.

6:31

My mother had just qualified at the University

6:33

of Vienna as a doctor. Jewish

6:36

doctors could only treat Jewish patients, but

6:38

the problem was about a third of the population of

6:40

Vienna was Jewish. Sorry,

6:43

about a third of the population of Vienna were doctors and

6:45

only about 10% of the population is Jewish.

6:49

We're not going to have that many patients. So

6:51

they decided to leave, but their parents who were

6:53

getting closer to the end of their careers sort

6:57

of procrastinated, I guess. They were eventually

6:59

wanting to leave, but sadly they left

7:01

it too late.

7:02

Yeah, I didn't realize. I don't know

7:04

when in your life you did a bio of your maternal

7:07

grandfather who died in the concentration

7:09

camps?

7:11

Yes, that's right. That was

7:13

published, I think, 2003 or

7:15

something like that, about 20

7:18

years ago. I'd

7:19

been working on it for a few

7:21

years, actually. It was like a part-time project

7:24

while I was doing my more academic

7:26

work to read his books,

7:29

because he wrote a couple of books and many articles

7:33

and read a lot of letters,

7:36

all in German. So I read it quite slowly and

7:39

then to write it up.

7:42

Well, that's great. I'm impressed

7:46

and admire that. I

7:49

thought my next book would be, I started,

7:52

I took a year off school 50 years ago to work on a history

7:54

book. I have all

7:56

the material and I told myself this next book is going

7:58

to be taking, I took the box out. But

8:01

it's intimidating after a while, but it's nice to

8:03

have a labor of love like that. And

8:06

for you to learn, I mean, like

8:08

doing this podcast, if you're going to write a book, it

8:11

forces you to read all the things you might not have read

8:13

otherwise. That's right.

8:14

And I got to know my grandfather, who

8:16

of course I'd never known in flash because

8:19

he was murdered before I was born. But

8:23

I did get to know him and his thought to

8:26

the greatest possible extent.

8:27

Now you answered one question

8:30

I was going to ask. When I read, I read

8:32

about your father, but I didn't read anything

8:34

about your mother. I was going to ask what she did. So your mother was

8:36

a doctor. Did she practice as a doctor in Australia

8:38

when you moved there? Was she moved there? Yes.

8:42

She had to pass the Australian medical

8:44

exams. It seems pretty incredible now,

8:46

but the University of

8:49

Melbourne or Australia generally did

8:51

not recognize a medical degree from the University

8:53

of Vienna. She

8:56

had to do all the exams again in

8:59

English, of course, but she did

9:01

manage to pass and then she practiced for most

9:04

of her life.

9:05

So your father had an

9:07

imported coffee or something tea. So had

9:09

he had an education at the University of Education

9:12

as well or no?

9:13

He was educated at a school

9:15

of commerce, business school

9:18

in Vienna rather than at the main

9:22

campus of the university.

9:23

So that leads me

9:25

to two questions, which I sometimes ask people. First

9:27

of all,

9:29

you're an academic and I've

9:31

always wondered what causes

9:34

people to become academic. I know in my

9:37

case

9:37

what did, but did your mother or father

9:39

have a bigger influence on you in that regard?

9:44

That's hard to say really. I

9:47

think it was kind of assumed that I would go

9:49

to university. I

9:51

had a sister six years older than me and she had

9:53

gone to university.

9:56

So I think that was assumed, but certainly

9:59

it was my mother's. side of the family that

10:01

was more academic. My

10:03

grandfather, the one who I wrote about, her father,

10:06

had actually

10:10

studied classics Greek

10:13

and Latin and then

10:15

taught them, not at a university but

10:17

at Vienna's most academic

10:20

high school.

10:22

And so, you know, that was quite

10:24

a high standard of teaching and

10:27

he also wrote articles, published

10:29

articles related to his

10:31

understanding of ancient

10:33

Greek and Latin.

10:36

So, okay, so there was the academic

10:39

aspect, as I've often said on this

10:41

program, my mother wanted me to be a doctor, she was a

10:43

Jewish mother and wanted me to be a doctor, but there wasn't

10:46

any pressure on you to become a doctor or anything

10:48

like that.

10:49

No, no, but there's one other thing that I should

10:52

mention actually because I don't want to just have a male

10:54

bias here and that is that my grandmother,

10:57

my mother's mother, also went to the University

10:59

of Vienna. She was the 37th

11:01

woman to graduate from the University of Vienna

11:03

and only the third woman to graduate

11:06

in maths and physics.

11:08

She did maths and physics.

11:10

Yeah, she

11:13

did study that

11:16

and she

11:19

actually had an invitation after she graduated

11:21

to go to Berlin to work

11:23

with Max Planck. But

11:26

she turned it down because she wanted to marry my grandfather.

11:29

So another case of a woman sacrificing

11:32

her scientific career

11:34

for a man. Not that he didn't

11:36

have a career, she worked in an

11:40

association of banks and bankers doing mathematical

11:43

work for them, I think, but

11:46

didn't have the scientific career she could have. You never know,

11:48

she might have been happier, you never know. Probably.

11:52

But that leads me naturally

11:54

to the next question. I was going to say with your mother as a doctor

11:56

and now

11:57

with her mother as a math and physics.

11:59

Why didn't you become a scientist? I always wonder why

12:02

people don't become scientists. We

12:06

had to make a choice at high school at that

12:08

time. Made a choice that,

12:10

um, uh, about

12:14

in the third last year of high school. So

12:16

you specialize for your last two years of high

12:18

school. Either you're going to do maths

12:20

and sciences, or you were going to do basically

12:23

humanities. Yeah. Um,

12:26

and I, I've done

12:29

fine at maths and the sciences,

12:31

but, uh, I really enjoyed

12:34

the others more and I enjoyed writing.

12:37

And maybe I got that a bit from my father because

12:39

my father was not educated in

12:41

that way. He was really interested

12:44

in history. We had quite a library of

12:46

history books. He was often talking

12:48

about history. Um, he

12:50

also was quite gifted for languages. He,

12:52

as well as, of course, German and English. He knew

12:55

French quite well. So, you

12:57

know, maybe there was a bit of that in me in

12:59

some way as well. You know, you, you,

13:02

you

13:03

pre

13:04

view the questions that I'm going, I thought I would, that

13:07

I'm going to ask next, you naturally lead to them because I was going

13:09

to ask about reading. That's the other thing I'm always interested in. Um,

13:14

when you started reading, who influenced your reading?

13:16

And I guess it was your father in that case more. And when

13:19

you were younger, you read history

13:21

or did you, did you read a lot of fiction or did you

13:23

read, um, what did you read? What

13:26

got you interested in reading? Um,

13:27

well, I mean, depending

13:29

how young I was, I read some bad

13:31

boys fiction, I guess. Good. It

13:34

would now be considered horrendously racist.

13:37

Um, you know, tales of brave

13:39

white men exploring Australia, for example.

13:42

Um, and, um,

13:45

but then I did read

13:47

quite a bit of history. At some point I actually

13:49

read more or less in cover to cover, Winston

13:52

Churchill's six volume history of the second

13:54

world war. Um, so

13:56

I did get quite absorbed in that. Of course the

13:58

second world war was fairly close. at that

14:00

stage growing up in the 50s.

14:03

And obviously it had been crucial

14:05

to my family and I felt

14:07

that strongly. So I read that.

14:10

But I also read as a teenager, Bertrand

14:13

Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which

14:15

was the first philosophy work that I read

14:18

and I enjoyed his clear style

14:20

and I enjoyed explanations of ideas

14:23

that were quite new to me. So

14:25

yeah, they were. Well,

14:27

we're going to ask obviously how he ended up doing philosophy,

14:29

but Churchill, so he deserved

14:32

the award he won for that book you think. Yeah,

14:35

I thought he was an excellent writer. He

14:38

was an excellent speaker. There

14:40

aren't many Nobel Prizes or whatever

14:42

that have gone for nonfiction books. So

14:45

there's very few. And

14:48

I admit I haven't read it that. Now I think I maybe

14:50

should turn to it because I do love history. But

14:53

you did study history. You studied law. You

14:55

studied as an undergraduate. Well,

14:57

before so in high school, you

15:00

had to specialize. You chose the humanities aspect

15:02

for the last three years. When

15:05

did you read Bertrand Russell? Was you still in high

15:07

school? Yes, I was still in high school.

15:09

Okay. And I assume that piqued

15:11

your interest in philosophy. That was that the initial philosopher

15:14

that you read that sort of not

15:16

Aristotle or any of the others. That's

15:18

right. He was definitely

15:21

the first philosopher I read. And yes, it did

15:24

piqued my interest, but so too did

15:26

my older sister's boyfriend who

15:28

had studied a bit of philosophy and

15:31

talked to me about it. And so I think

15:34

he was a decisive factor in my

15:36

deciding to not only study law,

15:39

which was going to be my profession and which in

15:41

Australia, as in Britain, you started immediately

15:44

as an undergraduate, but

15:46

also doing history for interest

15:48

and then saying, okay, well, I can combine

15:50

history and philosophy for the interest side of

15:52

things. Yeah, the new

15:54

catch-all degree in the States that my extra my

15:57

septum is never received and in England too, I think it's.

15:59

PPE, Politics, Philosophy

16:02

and Economics. I think that's sort of it. Yeah, I

16:04

taught students in that in a couple of years when

16:06

I taught at Oxford.

16:12

So you added philosophy, but you planned to be

16:14

a lawyer. Is

16:15

that what you planned? I did plan to be a lawyer.

16:18

I never imagined that I could make a living as a philosopher.

16:20

And, you know, I thought I do need to make

16:22

a living. And

16:24

it was only rather gradually that I let that slip.

16:27

I mean, when I finished

16:30

my

16:31

BA and

16:33

done well in that before I'd quite finished the law

16:36

degree, and I was offered

16:38

a graduate scholarship to go on and write

16:41

a master's degree in philosophy. And

16:43

so I went to the law faculty and said, can I

16:45

postpone finishing my law degree?

16:48

And they said, sure, yes, just come back when you've finished

16:50

your MA. But then when I finished my

16:52

MA, I got up at another scholarship to go to Oxford.

16:55

So I postponed again. There's

16:58

still time. Okay,

17:03

but it's interesting that you were still going to be a lawyer, because

17:05

again, my brother became a lawyer, and for

17:08

my parents, it was before that we become professionals.

17:10

They didn't go to university. But

17:12

there was no pressure for you to be a professional in that sense.

17:15

It was just your view that, well, it's pretty

17:17

hard to earn a living hanging or shingle up saying

17:19

philosopher,

17:20

you know, inquiry. Yeah, I had no

17:22

idea about that. And I hadn't really thought of being an academic

17:25

at that point.

17:26

Now, this could

17:28

be an error in one of your bios, and I

17:30

think for you which one did

17:33

you do a second BA at Oxford?

17:35

No, I didn't. Bachelor

17:38

of Philosophy. It's strictly

17:40

I mean, it's weird, you know, but Oxford is weird in

17:43

many ways. Yeah, yeah, almost. But

17:45

it's actually, it is a postgraduate

17:47

degree, you can't do it as an undergraduate.

17:50

And yet it's, it's called a Bachelor

17:52

of Philosophy. It's a two

17:54

year graduate degree. So it's a little shorter

17:56

than doing a Doctor of Philosophy. It

17:59

has some courses which the Oxford

18:02

doctorate had no courses,

18:04

it was simply a thesis degree. And

18:06

you did write a thesis but the thesis was a shorter

18:09

one

18:09

than the Oxford defill.

18:11

So when I

18:13

asked people in my philosophy

18:15

department in Melbourne what degree

18:18

I should do, they recommended the be filled because

18:20

they said it's broader than doing the

18:22

doctorate and we'll

18:24

still regard it as a qualification if

18:26

you want to get a job and you come back here. And

18:29

they did, so I did come back with

18:32

only a be fill and

18:34

across the Masters and

18:36

Bachelors degree.

18:38

And the fact that I didn't have a doctorate

18:40

was not a barrier to getting an academic

18:43

job at that time. Interesting, so

18:45

you never got the doctorate at

18:47

Oxford? Okay, that's interesting. That's

18:49

right. And the thesis

18:52

you wrote,

18:53

the one that I think you published in the book was a thesis

18:55

you wrote while in Australia,

18:57

right? Why should I be moral or something like that?

19:00

I wrote Why Should

19:02

I Be Moral in Australia, but I didn't

19:04

really publish that as a book, although

19:07

it's figured in

19:08

other books. I wrote a book called How We To Live,

19:10

which is along that theme, but that came

19:12

out more than 20 years later. Much

19:15

later, I know the book. Yeah, okay,

19:17

so that's great. Yeah, the

19:20

Oxford philosophy thesis was

19:22

published in a slightly expanded form, it's

19:25

called Democracy and Disobedience. Oh, that's

19:27

right. It was about whether there's a

19:30

right to civil disobedience in a democracy.

19:34

Okay, which becomes

19:36

relevant in a way to animal

19:38

liberation at some level,

19:40

which we'll get to. Well, that's true. But at the time, I

19:42

was thinking more the Vietnam War. Yeah, sure.

19:44

Which is a,

19:46

yeah, and

19:49

I was really, I mean, how could one, I well, I was gonna

19:51

say how could not one not protesting against Vietnam War,

19:54

like a lot of people didn't, my

19:56

friend Noam Chomsky tells me most academics didn't,

19:58

but he, but

20:00

Were you active in

20:03

the UK or in Australia? I guess it would

20:05

have been. I was more active in Australia as an

20:07

undergraduate when doing my master's. I actually

20:10

was the leader of a group called

20:14

Melbourne University Students

20:16

Against Conscription

20:18

or Campaign Against Conscription, I think it was.

20:21

So that was after

20:23

the draft was introduced in Australia. It was

20:26

specifically campaigning against that. And

20:29

that was introduced in order to provide troops

20:31

to serve alongside American

20:34

allies in Vietnam.

20:35

I didn't realize there was a conscription in Australia

20:38

too.

20:38

Okay, in Vietnam. Yeah, that obviously

20:41

was a good political rallying point.

20:43

I mean, I was against the war, even without that,

20:45

of course, but in terms of

20:47

rallying people who didn't want to serve and

20:49

whose parents didn't want their children to serve,

20:52

that was a strong point.

20:54

Okay, well, so civil disobedience.

20:58

And then it's a very

21:00

important meeting,

21:02

which I heard you talk about actually mentioned it

21:04

briefly in Animal Liberation. And

21:06

I read more about it

21:08

with a fellow student.

21:09

I was very pleased to see that student is now, I don't

21:12

know if he still is, but became a professor

21:14

at Cape Breton University, which is not too

21:16

far away from where I live. And

21:19

another reason for you to come visit. Well,

21:21

that was actually the reason I visited Prince Edward Island

21:23

the first time, as I mentioned, when we

21:26

were talking before we started

21:29

recording.

21:31

I went to visit him and his wife

21:33

Mary in Sydney, Cape

21:35

Breton

21:37

with my wife and a very

21:39

small child to see them

21:41

again, because we'd been really close at Oxford. And

21:45

they were living there. And then we decided

21:47

we would see a bit more of Canada. So we hired

21:50

a car and drove

21:52

from

21:52

Cape Breton to Montreal, stopping

21:56

at a few places on the way and Prince Edward

21:58

Island was one of them.

21:59

great. Well I'm glad you've been there. I hope you'll, as I said

22:02

before we begin recording, I hope you'll come

22:04

back. But he had a profound

22:06

effect on you. So why don't you review

22:08

that briefly for listeners?

22:11

He had an extremely profound effect

22:14

on me and it was just an accidental meeting. He

22:16

was a fellow graduate

22:18

student

22:19

at Oxford

22:20

and there was a class

22:22

that we attended together but the class had

22:24

nothing to do with animals.

22:28

But after the class I had asked a question

22:30

in one particular session and after the class

22:33

he asked me whether I've been satisfied with the

22:35

answer that had been given. And

22:38

we talked about that a little and the conversation

22:41

started to get into deeper

22:42

issues and he said

22:44

why don't we have lunch because the

22:46

class finished just before lunch. You can come

22:49

back to my college and we can continue the conversation.

22:52

So he invited me to to

22:54

Balliol College for lunch and

22:57

we were offered a choice of two dishes.

22:59

There was a hot dish which was spaghetti

23:03

and there was a salad plate and

23:05

the spaghetti had a kind of nondescript red

23:07

brown sauce on top of it and

23:10

Richard said can you tell me if

23:12

there's meat in the sauce and when

23:14

he was told there was he took the salad plate.

23:16

So I took the

23:19

spaghetti and we sat

23:21

down, we ate our lunches and

23:23

we finished the conversation that

23:25

we've been having about the class and

23:29

then I asked him because it was really unusual

23:31

in this is 1970 to meet somebody

23:35

who had a problem with with eating

23:37

meat and he didn't seem to be a Hindu

23:39

or anything like that. So I said

23:42

basically you know why did you ask that question

23:44

about the meat? Do you have a problem with eating meat? And

23:48

I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought maybe

23:50

he would think it was bad for his health. Some

23:52

people around like that then, but

23:55

not many. I thought maybe he's

23:57

going to be a complete pacifist you know,

23:59

who says just killing is wrong, we'll start

24:01

by. But

24:04

instead he said something much simpler. He said, I don't think

24:07

it's right to treat animals

24:09

in the way that

24:11

animals are treated to be made into our food. And

24:15

that surprised me because I thought that

24:17

animals have good lives on farms. I thought they were

24:19

all outside in the fields, raising away

24:21

happily. Of course, then they get rounded

24:23

up and trekked off to slaughter. They have

24:25

one terrible day in their

24:29

years. Is that so bad?

24:31

But he said, no, that's not true

24:33

anymore.

24:34

Many animals are indoors now. They're very

24:37

crowded or perhaps they're in

24:39

feedlots. And

24:42

whatever can be done to make it cheaper to

24:44

produce their meat

24:46

is done. So really,

24:48

we're doing all sorts of bad things to

24:50

give them pretty horrible lives.

24:53

And I was surprised by that. I wanted to learn

24:56

more. He recommended the one book

24:58

that I think existed then on that subject, a book

25:01

by Ruth Harrison called Animal Machines.

25:04

And

25:05

I read that and I found that very convincing

25:08

too.

25:09

And so I joined Richard

25:12

and a couple of other friends that he knew in Oxford

25:14

who were vegetarians.

25:17

Wow. Right

25:21

then, you became vegetarian and you remained that.

25:23

You never became, you never had withdrawal

25:26

symptoms or anything like that? No, I never had

25:28

withdrawal symptoms. I would say it was

25:30

not instant. I should mention I was already married by then.

25:32

So I obviously went home and told my wife about

25:34

this conversation that I'd had. And

25:37

she looked at the book by Ruth Harrison as

25:39

well. So it was a joint decision. I

25:43

do know some families are one spouse

25:46

is a vegetarian, the other isn't, but it's got to be hard.

25:48

I honestly think I probably could not

25:50

have done it at that stage because you would

25:54

go to make yourself into a kind of crank

25:56

in many people's eyes. And if my

25:59

wife had thought that.

25:59

too and not supported me, it would have

26:02

been too

26:02

hard for me. I understand that. Yeah, no, no,

26:05

it's great that you both, well, joint decision

26:07

and we'll talk similar here.

26:10

So

26:11

and we'll get to that. But

26:14

your development of philosophy and your own

26:16

philosophy and I want to

26:19

talk about the context of animal liberation

26:22

comes from the idea, and I don't know if

26:24

this verbiage is yours or the

26:26

equal consideration of interest,

26:28

which is a central sort of term

26:32

and a central idea that

26:33

really forms

26:35

the basis of animal liberation

26:38

and your views about that and many other

26:40

things. You want to explain that a little bit?

26:42

Yes, and that is not,

26:45

I didn't put those words together,

26:47

the equal consideration of interest. I

26:50

took them from an article written by

26:52

the philosopher Stanley

26:55

Ben, but he

26:57

was not writing about animals. He was writing about

27:00

what is the basis for equality

27:02

among humans.

27:04

And I don't think he was the only

27:06

one to use that phrase either. I'm not absolutely

27:08

sure of that, but he wrote

27:11

quite a prominent article. And this was a

27:14

puzzle that philosophers were talking about

27:16

at that time. So we say that all

27:18

humans are equal.

27:20

But what exactly do we mean by that? Because

27:22

it's obvious that humans differ in

27:25

how tall they are, how strong they

27:27

are. They differ in regard

27:30

to sex. They differ

27:32

in regard to

27:33

abilities, whatever

27:35

it might be, academic abilities,

27:38

musical abilities, sporting abilities.

27:41

So what does it mean to say they're equal? And

27:44

one of the answers that seemed to me

27:46

to be a reasonably plausible answer to that was

27:49

to say, well, they're all entitled

27:51

to have their interests equally considered. So

27:55

we have interest in living our lives well

27:58

and having a good life and not suffering.

27:59

pain and misery.

28:02

And there's no reason why those

28:04

who are of our

28:06

race or of our sex

28:08

or any other of those groups

28:11

that you might think, why their interests should

28:13

count more than those of other

28:15

races, sexes and different groups,

28:18

nationalities. So fundamentally,

28:21

humans are all entitled to have their interests

28:23

given equal consideration.

28:25

And I agree with that, I

28:27

still agree with that. But

28:31

why does this stop at the boundary of

28:33

our species? That was the question that

28:35

Ben didn't

28:37

ask. And I looked at other philosophers who

28:39

talked about equality and come up with

28:42

other answers, similar ones, generally,

28:45

they didn't ask that question either.

28:47

Which is the basis of what you

28:49

would call central

28:51

to the book, again, the idea of speciesism.

28:54

The fact that people don't even ask that question is

28:57

the speciesist, I guess is

28:59

the way to say it,

29:02

is the assumption that one doesn't even have to ask the question.

29:05

That's right. That's right. There is just

29:07

that completely unspoken assumption. And

29:10

whereas if somebody made it on the basis of race

29:13

or sex, we would think that's outrageous.

29:16

But why don't we think

29:18

that about species? Well,

29:20

maybe because we are in the same situation

29:23

as the most blatant, racist in a

29:25

racist society would have been when they

29:27

didn't even question the idea that you don't have to

29:29

give equality to blacks.

29:31

Exactly. And your point, and we'll get to

29:33

it probably later, is that if

29:36

one of the purposes of philosophy

29:38

is to

29:39

cause us to question things that we wouldn't normally

29:42

question that are accepted assumptions

29:44

without thinking that

29:46

if that's the purpose of philosophy, it's kind of disappointing

29:49

that philosophers on the hall had

29:52

fallen into the trap of not

29:54

even asking that question.

29:56

Yes, it is disappointing. And of course, it

29:58

does make us wonder about it.

29:59

or what is it that we've learned about today that

30:02

we might see? Well

30:04

now we're almost,

30:07

you know, this is a natural segue to

30:10

getting to the details of the book, but I do want to,

30:12

I mean, the context of the book

30:14

too and what you talk about, the other thing

30:16

that at least I know you for, and I'm not a philosopher,

30:20

although I've read a bunch of your books,

30:23

well, the basis of

30:25

your philosophy, one would say is utilitarianism,

30:28

is that right? Do you want

30:30

to describe

30:31

that again for people?

30:33

Sure. So utilitarianism

30:37

is an ethical view, which firstly

30:40

says that actions are right

30:42

or wrong in accordance with their

30:44

consequences. So if their consequences

30:47

on the whole are good, all

30:50

things considered, then the actions are

30:52

right. And if the consequences are bad,

30:55

all things considered,

30:57

the actions are wrong.

30:58

And

31:00

that's a description of a general family of

31:02

theories that we now call consequentialism, obvious

31:05

reasons. And it's different

31:07

from those theories that say, no, here's an absolute

31:09

rule, you must never tell a lie, no

31:12

matter what the consequences are telling a lie, let's say.

31:15

But utilitarianism

31:18

is one form of consequentialism, it's

31:20

the form that says the consequences that matter

31:23

are consequences for well-being,

31:26

essentially for

31:28

happiness

31:29

and

31:30

avoidance of its opposite

31:33

pain or suffering.

31:34

So

31:36

what we, the consequences we want to judge

31:38

actions as right or wrong by,

31:40

have they maximized

31:43

the surplus of

31:45

happiness over misery? Or if

31:47

there is no such surplus, minimized

31:50

the surplus of misery over happiness? Now,

31:53

is that well, I want to get to it, but that when you

31:55

want to start talking about maximizing and minimizing,

31:57

it does bring up the idea of effective altruism.

32:00

So we'll get there in a second, I guess. But

32:04

that does mean, and you already

32:06

alluded to this, that something

32:09

which, of course, I happen to agree with, that this

32:11

idea of absolute moral or absolute ethics

32:14

doesn't make sense. Because in some cases,

32:17

at some times and some places,

32:20

the consequences of a behavior can be good.

32:22

And at other times, the consequences of the same

32:24

behavior can be bad, which means

32:26

that behavior or that attitude

32:29

or whatever you want to call it is not absolutely

32:32

morally or ethically reprehensible, but

32:34

it depends on the circumstances.

32:37

Yeah, well, that's certainly my view and the utilitarian

32:39

view. But there are some

32:40

ethicists who denied that

32:42

who said, no.

32:46

Even there's this Latin saying, do

32:49

justice though the heavens fall, or

32:52

the world perishes. Now, to me,

32:54

that's crazy. I mean, it's like

32:56

saying, well, it would

33:00

be worth waging a nuclear war if otherwise

33:03

somebody would unjustly benefit.

33:05

Yeah. That's

33:08

crazy. Yeah, obviously,

33:10

I'm not sympathetic to it too. And as a scientist, I'm

33:12

not sympathetic to it, which is surprises of people. Because

33:15

physics, some people think of as absolute laws.

33:17

And it's absolutely not the case. One of the greatest, most

33:20

important development in physics in the

33:22

last 50 or 60 years is the realization

33:25

that there's no absolute truths in science.

33:28

Science can prove what's actually false,

33:31

but not what's absolutely true. And even the

33:33

laws of physics evolve. And

33:36

there's no theory, even our best theory,

33:38

is it applies in every case in the

33:40

universe. That's a surprise, I think, to

33:42

a lot of people. So I mean, it meshes

33:44

with certainly my personal view

33:47

of looking at history

33:49

and anthropology and other things. I

33:53

remember when I was younger, it really hit me

33:55

that some things I had just naturally

33:57

taken for granted as being good, I could see

33:59

in certain ways. I learned in certain times

34:01

in history and in certain

34:03

societies were not viewed that way at all. And

34:06

it opened up my eyes to the notion that

34:10

maybe, well, I think I'm

34:12

not sophisticated enough to call myself a consequentialist,

34:15

perhaps utilitarian, but it's, I think,

34:17

the basis of my own view of the world. But

34:20

I did read somewhere that the

34:23

version of utilitarianism

34:26

that you're associated with is called hedonistic,

34:28

which really broke. I never thought of you as a hedonist,

34:30

but I want to explain

34:32

that. The popular sense of hedonist

34:35

means that I'm enjoying,

34:37

I'm lying out in the sun with a glass

34:39

of wine and whatever. So

34:43

that's an egoistic hedonist, I suppose.

34:45

Somebody is only thinking about their own pleasure. But

34:48

yeah, utilitarian are universal

34:50

hedonists.

34:51

That is, they're thinking about the pleasure

34:53

of everyone.

34:54

And in fact, and

34:56

this is an interesting point that utilitarians actually

34:59

have

35:00

consistently

35:01

talked about the

35:02

pleasure and pain of non-human

35:05

animals matters too.

35:08

You have to look for it, especially in Bentham,

35:10

the founder of the English School of Utilitarians.

35:14

There's only a few brief notes, but there

35:16

is a very important footnote in one of his

35:19

works that shows that he was very clearly aware of this.

35:22

But he was

35:24

too far ahead of his time. There were no laws

35:26

in England in that stage

35:29

to actually prevent people being cruel to animals

35:31

at all.

35:32

Okay. Well, then

35:35

one moved. Okay. And

35:37

when one talks about utilitarianism, I'd

35:40

never heard of the term effective altruism until

35:42

I learned it from you. Again, I think

35:45

if I'm right in reading, I think in

35:47

this book or some other book that you got it from some students.

35:50

It was actually, yes.

35:54

There was a group of students in Oxford in

35:57

about 2008. or 2009,

36:01

someone who had

36:03

formed this group. They

36:06

had to some extent been inspired by one of

36:08

my writings and

36:10

they thought that they should

36:13

do more good and they

36:15

were particularly at that stage focused on helping people

36:17

in extreme poverty, which is an issue I'd written

36:19

about as well.

36:21

And

36:22

they wanted a name for their group

36:24

and they tossed around a dozen or so

36:26

names

36:28

and eventually they decided to vote

36:31

on them

36:31

and the name that came out on top was Affective

36:34

Altruism.

36:35

So yeah, that was a

36:37

collective decision. I don't know whether

36:40

one of them particularly proposed that or

36:42

argued for it, but it was a collective

36:44

decision. That's caught on. But

36:47

you want to describe that sort of the

36:50

another difference, but

36:53

it obviously stems from consequentialism,

36:56

but you want to explain what one means by affective

36:59

altruism.

37:00

Yeah, sure. So altruism

37:03

is most people understand. It's like doing good for others

37:07

and most people think that that's a nice idea.

37:10

But not very many people think about the importance

37:13

of making

37:14

your doing good for others as effective

37:17

as you can. When

37:18

people

37:19

give to charity for example, they

37:22

often give very impulsively. They

37:25

see a picture of a smiling child

37:27

and they think, oh, that's a good charity. I'll donate

37:29

to them or some friends giving

37:32

to them. But it makes

37:34

a huge difference which

37:37

charity you donate to. But let's

37:39

just stay with the example of doing

37:41

being altruistic by donating to a charity. It

37:45

makes a huge difference. And I'm not talking about charities

37:47

that are frauds. There's a very small number

37:50

of them that of course are complete waste of money. But

37:52

even among charities that you think of as good

37:54

that are doing quite a good purpose,

37:57

there can be other

37:59

charities. that might do hundreds of times

38:01

as much good with your donation.

38:04

And people find that hard to believe. But so

38:07

let me give you an example.

38:09

A good charity that

38:11

most people would accept as a good charity is one that trains

38:13

guide dogs to help people who are blind. Right?

38:16

It's somebody who's blind can get around

38:18

better with a guide dog.

38:20

Doesn't seem to, you know, the guide dog seems to

38:23

enjoy the work in a sense. So it's a

38:25

nice thing to do.

38:26

But it's pretty expensive because

38:28

it takes a lot of skilled training to

38:31

train the guide dog. And you have to then train the

38:34

blind person to be with

38:36

the dog.

38:38

So roughly it costs you $40,000

38:40

US to train

38:43

a guide dog.

38:44

Now, what else could you do with that? Well,

38:47

this is something I owe to Toby Ord, who's one of the

38:49

pioneers of one of these students I was mentioning

38:51

at Oxford in early 2000s.

38:54

He looked around for other things you could

38:57

do. And he found

38:58

that at that time, anyway, there was

39:00

an article that said that for $25,

39:02

you could prevent someone becoming blind

39:05

by treating trachoma,

39:07

which is the major

39:08

cause of preventable blindness. It's the

39:11

main cause of blindness in quite dusty

39:13

countries without a lot of hygiene. So

39:16

North Africa, for example. And

39:18

yet it's very easy to prevent.

39:20

So, you know, think of the difference between, you know,

39:23

helping one blind person

39:25

and preventing someone becoming blind. It's obviously better

39:27

to prevent someone becoming blind at all.

39:29

And then think of the cost difference, right? $25

39:31

versus $40,000. Now, it's

39:34

pretty easy to see that there's

39:36

actually more than a thousand fold

39:39

good done

39:41

in donating to the nonprofit

39:43

that treats trachoma than in the nonprofit

39:46

that trains guide dogs.

39:48

Well, perhaps, you know, perhaps the

39:50

cost of that treating trachoma has gone up now.

39:52

Maybe the lower hanging fruit has been picked. Maybe

39:54

it's $100, but, you know, it's still $100

39:56

compared to $40,000, but still $4,000.

39:59

100 times as much. So

40:03

yeah, this group really went

40:07

through that, worked that out, and decided they needed to

40:09

publicise it. And

40:12

Toby Ode set up a group called Giving What We Can

40:14

to publicise that

40:16

and

40:17

emphasise the importance of actually doing

40:19

some research into what are

40:21

the best ways to do good. And I think that's

40:24

the biggest contribution that the effective altruism

40:26

movement has made. It does popularise

40:28

the idea of living, to some extent,

40:30

altruistically. It doesn't say you have to be a saint.

40:33

But yes, having altruism is part

40:36

of your goals of life.

40:38

But then it emphasises the importance of

40:41

doing the research, or now you can look up the

40:43

research online and

40:45

finding the most effective ways

40:47

to be an altruist. Well, yeah, and you

40:50

promoted too in your books, at least

40:53

one or two books about... Yeah, I have a book

40:55

called The Most Good You Can Do. The Most Good You Can Do,

40:57

I remember that.

40:59

And well, first, before we get there, I mean, that

41:03

research is useful to the extent that people

41:05

learn about it. So is there a place people

41:07

can go? There

41:08

must be a website you can give... There

41:10

are a couple. And there's actually another

41:13

book that I wrote called The Life You Can Say, which is specifically

41:15

about global poverty. And

41:18

that led to an organisation being

41:20

founded. And a guy approached

41:22

me and said, you know, this book ought to be

41:24

turned into an organisation. And I

41:27

put up a website about it, but that's about all I've got

41:29

to do. And he

41:31

said, I volunteered to do it. He was somebody who'd had a

41:34

guy called Charlie Bresley, who had a career in

41:36

men's retailing,

41:37

been quite successful

41:39

in a national men's clothing chain.

41:43

And

41:44

but the side of that really didn't

41:46

satisfy him. That wasn't really what he wanted to do

41:48

with his life. So he took early

41:51

retirement from that and

41:53

volunteered to set up this organisation, The

41:55

Life You Can Say, which

41:58

does some research of his own and aggregates.

41:59

other research

42:02

and you can go to the lifeyoucansave.org

42:05

and you can find a

42:06

curated list of 20 plus

42:08

organizations helping people

42:10

in extreme poverty that have been

42:12

assessed for being highly

42:14

effective in what they do. Well

42:16

that's great I wanted to get that information out

42:18

and that's that's great but you know

42:20

look but you've done there's so

42:22

it sounds like it sounds like it's something anyone

42:25

everyone could agree with and want to do but

42:28

you've gone further and I do want to mention you're

42:30

suggesting something and I think most people find a

42:33

lot harder to do although I understand

42:35

that you do it which is not just

42:38

maximum good you do

42:39

but the fact that

42:41

the maximum good you can do involves a significant

42:43

fraction of your own income if you're

42:45

if you're living in you know relatively materially

42:49

successful it's not just you know doing

42:51

the 1% or the 10% but but 40 or 50 or 60 percent you know

42:53

and and you to

42:58

motivate that you it's again as far

43:01

as I know you introduced this analogy of

43:03

a drowning child but maybe maybe

43:05

why don't you want to give it here I'll give you

43:07

yeah right yes this was the article

43:10

that influenced people

43:12

the students I mentioned in

43:15

the effective altruism movement

43:18

so I was trying to argue that

43:21

people are comfortably off

43:23

ought to be doing something to help

43:25

people in extreme poverty particularly

43:28

you know emphasizing that when

43:31

people are in extreme poverty they

43:33

die or their children particularly die disproportionately

43:37

and and so to

43:40

to meet the sort of objection where people would say

43:42

well I'm not responsible for the fact that these

43:44

children in

43:45

wherever they are in low-income countries are

43:47

dying that's nothing to do with me so so

43:50

why why do I have

43:52

to help them I

43:55

asked people to imagine that they're

43:57

walking across a park that has a shallow pond

43:59

in it And they see,

44:01

to their surprise, that a

44:03

small child seems to have fallen into the pond and

44:05

is floundering around. Looks

44:08

like it's about to drown. And there's nobody

44:10

there

44:11

looking after the child.

44:13

No parents, no babysitter, no

44:15

lifeguard.

44:17

So what do you do, right? Well, the

44:20

first thing you think is I'd better run and jump

44:22

into the pond and pull the child out. No

44:24

danger to me because I know that this pond is

44:27

quite shallow.

44:28

But your second not so nice

44:30

thought is, oh, but I put on my best clothes

44:32

today because I'm going somewhere I need to impress

44:34

people. And I don't have time to get them off.

44:37

And they're going to get ruined.

44:39

And then you

44:41

stop and think at that point. Now, suppose

44:43

that you decided you weren't going to ruin your clothes and you walked

44:45

on. What would you think of that person?

44:48

And most people would, I

44:50

hope, will say, and I'm sure you would,

44:52

that would be a horrible thing to do. So

44:57

once I've got you saying that would be a horrible thing to do,

44:59

then you're accepting that

45:02

to save a child's life, you ought to

45:04

give up something at least. You ought to be

45:06

prepared to ruin

45:08

those expensive shoes

45:10

and save

45:12

the child.

45:13

And so

45:15

then the question is, well, where does this stop,

45:17

right?

45:19

And now the drowning child

45:21

example gets a little crazy. That you

45:23

imagine that there's more children. You

45:25

have to keep saving them each time

45:28

you walk past the pond or whatever. So

45:31

it is hard to say where the limit is.

45:34

And I don't really claim

45:36

now to say

45:38

that I

45:39

know where the limit is or that I live up to

45:41

an ideal limit. I think

45:44

I would probably have to do a lot

45:46

more sacrificing, a lot more giving than

45:48

I do to really be at a limit where

45:50

I could say, you know, there's nowhere further

45:52

that I ought to go.

45:54

But I think if you're comfortably off

45:57

as I am, then

45:59

you do

46:00

need to give something quite substantial. I don't think

46:02

it's enough to just give

46:05

small token donations because

46:09

it's not really going to make

46:12

your life into

46:14

something just

46:15

terrible. It's not going to make nearly as big

46:17

a difference to your life as what

46:20

you can donate is going to make to the lives of the people

46:23

who will benefit from it.

46:24

Assuming, of course, as we've been saying, that

46:26

you do give to an organization

46:28

that will use your donation effectively.

46:32

Yeah, no, and I know, personally, I do know you do a lot. That

46:39

leads to the last question before we specifically get

46:42

to animal liberation. This is relevant

46:44

to the last question I'll talk about later on about

46:46

what we can do. But one of the

46:48

things,

46:49

when you think about, I mean the Drying Child analogy

46:52

is one way of thinking about it, but

46:54

you have talked or written about something

46:58

very important, which is the evolutionary basis of altruism.

47:02

Understanding

47:04

the evolutionary base of altruism, if you're trying to think

47:06

how to get people

47:07

to lead good lives or act

47:10

altruistically or do more than they do, it's

47:13

always a challenge to try and figure out how to do it.

47:17

One way is to think about what

47:20

led to altruism in the first place and how you

47:22

can utilize the evolutionary basis

47:24

of altruism as a way to

47:27

help convince people to act.

47:29

I wonder if you want to talk about that. Is that basically a

47:31

guide for understanding

47:34

the evolutionary base of altruism as a guide

47:36

for influencing public policy, for example? Something

47:39

it makes... Yeah, so anyway,

47:41

I think I've explained that.

47:42

So, I mean, there's a lot to be said about evolution,

47:46

altruism and ethics.

47:50

And first, maybe let me say

47:52

something about what I think is the wrong way

47:54

to use evolution. And

47:57

that's the way that was used by social

47:59

Darwinists.

47:59

in the

48:01

20th century, I guess particularly, when,

48:03

you know, they

48:06

read Darwin, they accepted and they said,

48:08

okay, so therefore, you

48:11

know, life is simply a struggle

48:14

for survival and we must let the

48:16

weak fall by the wayside and we must champion

48:19

the strong so that they survive.

48:21

But you know, there's

48:23

that kind of moral lesson, you know,

48:26

the evolutionary theory is not teaching you a moral

48:28

lesson, it's telling you how it is that we got here

48:30

and

48:31

now we are here and the question

48:33

is what ought we to do. Now,

48:37

it's true that if you understand evolution, you

48:40

might question whether altruism is possible

48:43

at all because you might say, well, didn't evolution

48:45

make us

48:46

selfish in terms

48:48

of firstly ensuring our own survival

48:52

and secondly, as I say, Richard Dawkins

48:54

and others would teach us

48:57

extending that to our kin

48:59

and those who carry the same genes

49:01

as we do so that, you

49:04

know, that favours the survival of those genes

49:07

and that may be true and

49:09

that may be consistent with the forms of

49:11

altruism that are widely

49:13

shared. So, altruism

49:16

for your kin, particularly the closer

49:19

children, altruism

49:21

also for those you're in a close

49:23

and reciprocal relationship with because that

49:25

can benefit you, so your friends basically,

49:28

as well as them. And

49:32

what we might call universal altruism is

49:35

rarer. But it

49:38

does exist and it's interesting that it exists

49:40

because,

49:41

for example, you know,

49:43

people do help strangers,

49:45

people

49:46

donate blood which is going to go

49:48

to strangers, not really going to benefit them. And

49:51

the effective altruism movement

49:54

basically shows a lot of people act altruistically

49:56

to strangers in a variety of ways.

49:59

So,

50:01

a further question then was, how does that happen?

50:04

And there are different answers that could be given.

50:06

I've talked to Richard Dawkins about it. He

50:09

says it's kind of spandrel, you know, it's sort of

50:12

like the peacock's tail in some way. It's

50:14

something that just happens and gets selected for

50:17

in a strange way. I

50:19

don't find that entirely convincing. My

50:22

view is that it has to do with the fact that

50:25

we're also evolved to be able

50:27

to reason. Again, you know, clearly

50:29

for

50:29

it benefited us to be able to reason and

50:32

helped us to survive.

50:34

But I see reason, I use the metaphor

50:36

of reason being like an escalator.

50:39

So once you

50:41

start reasoning, you can't necessarily

50:43

just jump off at any point or you

50:45

can try, but it's sort of this

50:47

cognitive dissonance. So

50:49

once we reason, we can we understand

50:51

that strangers are very like us,

50:54

that they suffer like we do.

50:56

And then we understand just what I was saying before

50:58

that, well, you know, here am I spending

51:00

a lot of money on something that I don't really

51:02

need and that isn't going to make me, you

51:04

know, transform my life in a wonderful

51:07

way permanently.

51:10

And with that amount of money, I could make a

51:12

much bigger difference to the lives of other people.

51:15

And so that starts to say, well,

51:18

you know, they do matter just as I matter.

51:20

So why not do that?

51:22

So

51:24

my explanation, I should say partial

51:26

explanation, because I'm sure it's not the only factor, is

51:29

that our ability to reason

51:31

helps us to reach the ethical judgment

51:34

that this is a good thing to do,

51:37

helping others, even if they're strangers, even

51:39

if they're not our friends, is

51:43

an ethical thing to do.

51:45

Excellent. OK, well, now and then.

51:47

Well, I was going to get to preference voting, but I think I've

51:49

been I've waited

51:52

long enough to get to the heart of matter, which

51:54

is not just, you know, how

51:57

to help your friends and neighbors

51:59

and other people.

51:59

but how to help animals and

52:02

to treat

52:02

animals interests and as

52:05

equal to our own in the sense that they have

52:07

equal, we

52:11

have to consider their interests equally. So,

52:14

Animal Liberation was written in 1975.

52:17

And I have

52:19

to say,

52:20

I'm gonna try and be a devil's advocate in some of

52:22

this because I wanna try and provoke so to give you

52:24

the opportunity to answer questions. Some things

52:27

I'm intrigued by and

52:30

may not agree with, but anyway, but on the

52:32

whole I do. And therefore it's hard

52:34

to become a devil's advocate. It has a profound

52:37

effect in my own life I have to say because I

52:39

will say this and people always say I make

52:41

it about me, but anyway. I

52:44

remember when my daughter was about seven, we were in

52:47

Aspen, I was doing a book signing in a bookstore called

52:49

the Explore Bookstore there, which

52:51

was one of my favorite bookstores, Catherine

52:54

Thalberg, you probably know them maybe. Catherine

52:56

Thalberg and- I'm not there actually, but wasn't there

52:58

a bookstore, wasn't there a bookstore called the Tattered

53:01

Pige or something like that? No, that's in Denver, Tattered

53:03

Cover, not in Aspen. There's a famous

53:05

Tattered Cover, maybe now they've changed it, but

53:07

there was a newspaper called the Explore Bookstore

53:10

and it was run by Catherine Thalberg. I was there once, but

53:12

it was quite a long time ago too. And her husband,

53:14

Bill Sterling, Yeah, I met him. was

53:17

the mayor of Aspen and they were

53:19

famous because they had a big controversy where they

53:21

tried to ban furs in Aspen. Yeah,

53:24

that's why I was there, that's where I met them. Yeah, they got

53:26

me to talk against furs.

53:28

Good, excellent. And well, around that time or

53:30

a little bit after my daughter, we were there

53:33

and my daughter was six or seven and loved

53:35

Catherine's dogs, they're always dogs in the store. And

53:37

so Catherine gave my seven year

53:39

old daughter, she said, here's a book you have to

53:41

read, it was Animal Liberation.

53:47

And my daughter's a vegetarian now and

53:49

I don't know if there was a causal relationship

53:52

there, but it had an impact. And

53:55

it's nice to see, so it's an important book, but it's really

53:57

nice to see that it's been. I'm

54:00

not sure updated is the right way to say, but it has.

54:03

It's been brought, a lot of

54:05

things have changed and a lot of things haven't changed. And

54:07

I think that's the key point. It's sort of, one

54:09

reads this saying, yes,

54:12

there's progress, but on the other hand, not

54:13

only is there not enough progress, in

54:15

some sense, we've taken steps backwards in

54:18

certain ways. And it's frustrating that your

54:20

own frustration comes out. We'll come

54:22

there.

54:25

And I now, by the way, don't eat meat,

54:28

and although

54:30

I still haven't yet removed

54:32

fish from my dive completely, being surrounded by

54:35

the water here. And so

54:37

you wiped a hand of the water. Does that mean

54:39

you hold a fish out of the water yourself? Well,

54:41

that's it. We'll get there. We'll get there because I've

54:44

actually, we'll get there because I

54:46

did fly fish and I fly

54:49

fish here. And now when I fly fish here, I hope I don't

54:51

catch fish because it's so much more

54:53

relaxing. I do it for my kayak.

54:55

But actually, I don't think I would catch fish anymore. I

54:59

used to catch fish and I used to do the worst

55:01

thing, which was catch them and leave them in

55:04

my bag and drive them back. This was

55:06

in Colorado. And then I finally realized,

55:08

no, I should kill them right away. And

55:11

at least that's better. How many people

55:13

who fish don't realize that? It's

55:15

mind-boggling to me. Yeah, well, it's not easy.

55:17

I mean, it's for some reason.

55:21

And maybe it's this, you talked about this in

55:23

terms of how we can convince ourselves.

55:25

I forget there's a term I'm going to use later. when

55:29

it's what we want to do. But it seems

55:31

a lot, neglecting the fish is a lot

55:33

easier than taking a rock and hitting them on the head with it. That's

55:35

an act of killing. And

55:38

in fact, it's the kindest thing you can do, but

55:41

it seems more

55:43

violent than just letting them die. And

55:46

it's really weird. It's really a weird thing. Anyway,

55:49

we'll get there because I do want to talk about a fish

55:51

or at least, and the

55:53

mussels and oysters, which is something, I understand you

55:55

have your own issues about. This

55:58

is a big lobster plate. And I've stopped eating

56:01

lobster for the moment after reading your book because

56:03

I really have to, I've always

56:05

thought that lobsters, that the solution of

56:08

lobster self-pain when they were being boiled was an illusion.

56:10

But I understand there's no research in that regard. But

56:13

we'll get there. It's based on, the

56:15

bottom line is that your book is based on the fact

56:17

that the equal consideration of an interest

56:20

should, it's speciesist to assume that

56:23

that stops at humans. So why don't you just

56:25

take it from there?

56:27

Yes, well, there's a lot to take from that. Yeah,

56:29

I know. And we'll go, I'll try and eat you through

56:32

it. But give you the answer. Right. So

56:34

if you have that principle of equal consideration of interest,

56:37

then you have to ask yourself

56:39

how serious are the interests of the animals

56:41

that are violated here

56:43

and how important are these interests

56:45

to us humans? So the

56:48

first point is, of course,

56:50

we don't need to eat animals to survive.

56:53

That's well known nowadays. Everybody knows people

56:56

who are vegetarian

56:58

or vegan. If you're vegan,

57:00

it's advisable to take some B12. But

57:04

otherwise, you

57:05

don't need to eat them. So

57:08

it's really, it's a matter of choice

57:11

about your diet. You think that you

57:13

enjoy these things more maybe.

57:17

But once you learn some

57:20

non-animal based cooking, plant based

57:22

cooking, I think there's lots of great dishes out there. There's

57:24

a wide

57:25

variety of cuisines. I

57:27

would really challenge

57:29

somebody to show that they

57:31

get more enjoyment from their food than I do. By

57:34

the way, the new book re-introduces

57:36

the recipes. I was very happy. That's

57:38

right. It reintroduces in a more personalized way some of

57:40

my favorite recipes from

57:43

the first edition. That's

57:45

right. So, so, you

57:47

know, that's the first thing. And then

57:50

what happens to the animals? And this goes back to what we

57:52

were talking about before. Richard

57:54

Keshen loaded me too and Ruth Harrison documented

57:57

in

57:58

her book.

57:59

and which unfortunately is still

58:02

going on with the great majority of

58:04

the meat produced. And

58:07

that is the animals are confined

58:09

indoors. They're very crowded.

58:12

This is particularly with chickens

58:14

and turkeys and also

58:17

with pigs. But

58:19

cattle also spend a good part of their lives

58:22

on feedlots. And

58:24

these are really very

58:27

bad lives for animals and for a whole

58:29

variety of reasons. And

58:31

by the way, we will go through each of them. I want to spend

58:34

a little time with each of them. So we'll

58:36

have more time. Okay,

58:37

so

58:40

yes, you are starting out with the kind of basis of

58:42

it. So if that's the case, then I don't

58:44

think we're justified

58:46

in supporting those industries

58:48

for needs that are not vital

58:52

to ourselves. And I should add, of course,

58:54

that in terms of net food

58:56

production, feeding

58:59

grains and soybeans to animals is just

59:01

wasteful. It doesn't produce more food.

59:04

Yeah, yeah. And we'll climb it. Yeah,

59:07

I want to get to those factors. But I wanted to start with just

59:09

the basic, if you wish philosophical

59:11

notion.

59:12

Yeah, so it is that idea which we talked

59:15

about before that pain

59:16

is bad, you know, pleasure, happiness

59:19

is good. And that

59:21

to say that they're only good when they apply

59:23

to humans is

59:25

in some ways analogous. I'm not saying

59:27

it's a parallel in every respect,

59:30

of course, but in some ways, it's analogous to

59:32

what racists and such

59:34

have said

59:35

about about blacks and women.

59:38

So I think we need to get past that prejudice,

59:40

we need to recognize that non-human animals

59:44

can feel pain. Again,

59:46

maybe not all of them, you mentioned oysters

59:48

before, I'm not going to say that oysters can feel pain.

59:52

But certainly all the

59:54

vertebrates and some of the invertebrates,

59:56

you mentioned the lobsters, octopus

59:58

also is another one.

59:59

invertible, you could think about a cable

1:00:02

of feeling pain.

1:00:03

And so we shouldn't

1:00:06

sacrifice their interest in

1:00:08

avoiding pain

1:00:09

for

1:00:10

relatively minor interests

1:00:12

of ours.

1:00:13

Okay, and that's the notion that that

1:00:16

we that that

1:00:18

consideration should not extend to animals other

1:00:21

than humans, as you've called speciesism, and

1:00:24

analogy to racism. I actually you

1:00:26

know, I know it's near the end of your book, but

1:00:28

I was still I was looking

1:00:30

again at the bio, I think it's the Wikipedia bio

1:00:33

view, and I was kind of amazed how

1:00:36

people take for granted this notion that that's

1:00:38

not a good thing to do. And especially

1:00:40

philosophers, who you think

1:00:43

would I mean, this quote, which

1:00:46

I hadn't seen before in your book, but I

1:00:48

did see in this room, I think it

1:00:50

was in the Wikipedia bio view, a

1:00:52

Roger Scruton who criticized your book

1:00:55

and animal liberation. I

1:00:58

was shocked at this quote, that that book

1:01:00

contains little or no philosophical arguments.

1:01:03

They, they derive their radical moral

1:01:06

conclusions from the vacuous utilitarianism

1:01:09

that counts the pain and pleasure of all living

1:01:11

things as equally significant, and

1:01:14

ignores just about everything that's been said

1:01:16

in our philosophical tradition about the real distinction

1:01:18

between persons and animals. What

1:01:20

has been said in our philosophical tradition about

1:01:22

that real distinction? I mean, it's just makes

1:01:24

it it's just, it's I was amazed

1:01:27

and ignores everything we said about the distinction,

1:01:29

the real philosophical distinctions between humans

1:01:31

and animals, of which he doesn't

1:01:34

elaborate, I kind of was shocked.

1:01:36

Yes, right. Well, I'm not sure

1:01:39

he was thinking of

1:01:40

Aristotle famously thought

1:01:43

that everything exists for us, basically, a

1:01:45

pretty winning in view of our role. He

1:01:47

may have been thinking of Kant who

1:01:50

regarded the fact that we are self-aware

1:01:52

autonomous beings as entitling

1:01:55

us to use and not

1:01:57

having obligations towards those beings who are living

1:01:59

things. not. But to me, you know,

1:02:02

the definitive answer to that was given by Bentham

1:02:04

in that footnote that I mentioned earlier,

1:02:06

where he says, the question is not can

1:02:08

they reason, or can they talk, but can

1:02:11

they suffer? And they suffer. And we're going to get to I

1:02:13

want to, I love why you're leading me along to just

1:02:15

where I want to go. But,

1:02:19

but I must say what I think what upset

1:02:21

me most, I pushed my

1:02:23

buttons when not not,

1:02:26

if I have problems with philosophy, and I do

1:02:28

every now and then, and

1:02:29

people seem to think I have a

1:02:32

case against philosophy, I don't. But

1:02:34

the one kind of argument that I hate is the appeal

1:02:36

to authority. When I've been in debates

1:02:39

or discussions, and I see people quote Kant,

1:02:42

or Aristotle, I don't, who cares?

1:02:45

I mean, I mean, it's fine. They're

1:02:48

good thinkers. But, but,

1:02:50

but that's not an argument that saying that

1:02:53

saying, you know, these great thinkers

1:02:55

have said this, the argument,

1:02:57

it's a quality their argument, not the who

1:02:59

said it that matters, it seems to me. And

1:03:02

so I'm saying that this philosophical tradition,

1:03:05

who cares about traditions, the question is, is what

1:03:07

is what is the distinction between you name

1:03:09

and animals? And, and does it validate

1:03:12

treating them significantly differently in certain

1:03:15

ways? Yes. I mean, I don't have a conversation with my I

1:03:17

do converse with my dog, actually. But

1:03:19

I don't expect my dog to respond in that regard.

1:03:22

But, but anyway,

1:03:25

so I pushed my own buttons, but you can hit you hit.

1:03:27

I don't know if you want. And now we won't go there.

1:03:31

But the key thing is the capacity to suffer.

1:03:34

That's often the arguments made if

1:03:37

someone has something or some entity

1:03:39

has the capacity to suffer, it we

1:03:42

should not cause them to suffer on duly,

1:03:45

if we can avoid it. That's right. And

1:03:47

in fact, Benson also, you know, went on to say, well,

1:03:50

if we're talking about being able to reason

1:03:52

or talk, then a horse or a dog

1:03:54

is better at it than an infant of a day

1:03:57

or a week or a month old. Yeah, we'll get we'll get

1:03:59

to the distinction.

1:03:59

between dogs or monkeys

1:04:02

or great apes and young children, which

1:04:09

is something you've brought up, which has upset

1:04:11

some people, but it's true. At

1:04:14

least the fact that they can

1:04:16

reason better is certainly true.

1:04:19

But let me now try and at

1:04:21

least push on this a little bit. It's

1:04:25

a question of degree, and it's a question of where you draw the

1:04:27

line, of course, and you point out, well, maybe the line

1:04:29

is between shrimps and oysters or mussels. And

1:04:33

then you go past that later on and talk about

1:04:35

insect spings in it. But this

1:04:38

really hit me because in my new book, which

1:04:42

is about things we don't know, my

1:04:46

last chapter is about consciousness, which is

1:04:49

something I thought in advance we knew the least

1:04:52

about. And after spending a lot of time reading about

1:04:54

it, I'm convinced I was right. Consciousness

1:04:58

is something that we don't even define, much

1:05:01

less know where it is. And a

1:05:03

discussion with Chomsky said he thought maybe the

1:05:06

notion of focusing on consciousness

1:05:08

and the mechanism of consciousness may be itself

1:05:11

ill-advised. But one thing

1:05:13

that was clear is that we tend to

1:05:16

equate behavior with

1:05:18

awareness or behavior with consciousness,

1:05:20

and that's clearly inappropriate.

1:05:24

So, amoeba, another

1:05:26

single celled

1:05:31

animal, single celled living entities,

1:05:35

will have behavior that makes it appear as if they're conscious.

1:05:38

They can even almost appear to have learned where

1:05:40

not to travel or how

1:05:43

to be away from a hot or acid

1:05:45

solution or something like that. And so

1:05:47

we have to be particularly

1:05:50

careful. I think Joseph LeDoux and

1:05:52

others, the people I've read, have

1:05:54

said that to distinguish routine behavior

1:05:57

and awareness

1:05:59

or consciousness.

1:06:02

And so, and then to take

1:06:04

that a little bit further, that Demasio

1:06:06

is another guy who said basically, the key

1:06:08

thing that sort of he thinks that leads to conscious

1:06:11

awareness, self awareness is feelings. Is

1:06:14

the fact that we have

1:06:16

feelings that first started just as homeostasis,

1:06:19

being aware of being

1:06:21

able to manipulate what's happening in our body by

1:06:23

nervous system helps a complicated organism

1:06:26

maintain its homeostatic condition, whereas

1:06:29

a simple organism doesn't need a central nervous system

1:06:31

necessarily to do that. But that leads to

1:06:33

feelings. But then we have to be

1:06:36

careful to again, not attribute

1:06:38

the, the causal relationships

1:06:41

between behavior, between

1:06:44

stimulus and behavior and

1:06:46

feelings could be different than, than what

1:06:48

you think it might be. Again, to take the example of anxiety,

1:06:51

as we'll do talked about, we

1:06:55

tend to think that, you know, that I

1:06:57

have these anti-anxiety drugs will, will

1:06:59

stop anxiety. What they tend to do is stop

1:07:01

the physiological response, but

1:07:03

it's quite likely that the physiological response

1:07:06

is what ultimately produces

1:07:08

the sense of anxiety sometimes later on

1:07:10

rather than the other way around. And

1:07:13

so if we assume that people are

1:07:15

in pain or, or suffering,

1:07:18

we may be just answer for more

1:07:20

rising. So let me, so in an extreme

1:07:22

way and to assume that

1:07:25

is, is it maybe

1:07:27

inappropriate? What do you, what do you have to say about that?

1:07:31

Well, I think you're right

1:07:33

that we can't identify behavior

1:07:35

with mental states like,

1:07:38

like

1:07:39

suffering or pain, but

1:07:42

they can be a reasonable indication

1:07:45

of it. And I think, you

1:07:48

know,

1:07:49

they're one of the important indications.

1:07:51

Another indication might be trying to directly

1:07:54

observe the nervous system and see

1:07:56

to what extent it parallels ours. And

1:07:59

I think that.

1:08:00

works for vertebrates to some extent,

1:08:04

but it isn't always enough. Because

1:08:08

even with vertebrates there might

1:08:10

be different parts of the brain involved

1:08:13

and so you were talking about fish

1:08:15

before, that's why there were some

1:08:17

challenges to the idea that fish can feel pain.

1:08:20

But

1:08:22

then how do you show that

1:08:24

it

1:08:24

seems like some other parts of the brain

1:08:26

are actually performing this function

1:08:29

of consciousness in fish from doing us?

1:08:31

Well one way would be to try and look at the behavior

1:08:34

and look at it in a somewhat more sophisticated

1:08:37

way. So I think you're

1:08:39

right that just you know there's no reason to believe

1:08:41

that an amoeba can feel pain just

1:08:43

because it moves away from something that would

1:08:45

damage or threaten it. But when

1:08:49

you look at fish there's

1:08:51

research that shows that they actually will make trade-offs

1:08:54

between things that normally they

1:08:57

seem to want

1:08:59

to do, preferred states, and

1:09:01

those that they want to avoid. So yes if

1:09:05

you

1:09:07

put a barrier in a tank that

1:09:09

will give a fish an electric shock if it passes through

1:09:12

it, it won't pass through it. But

1:09:15

suppose that

1:09:16

this is a fish that has

1:09:19

a companion, the kind of fish that pairs up with

1:09:22

another member of its species,

1:09:25

and the mate

1:09:27

is on the other side of this barrier.

1:09:30

Will the fish go through it? Well that will

1:09:32

depend on how strong the shock

1:09:34

is.

1:09:35

So if

1:09:36

the shock is not extremely

1:09:38

severe, yes the fish will

1:09:41

cross the barrier. If

1:09:42

the fish is, if the

1:09:44

shock is really severe, the

1:09:45

fish may not cross the barrier and the same

1:09:48

will be if you vary the incentive

1:09:50

to being food for instance and how hungry

1:09:52

the fish might be. So

1:09:54

it looks like they're trading off in a somewhat similar

1:09:56

way to what we might do. And then

1:09:58

another factor

1:09:59

factor is if you give them analgesics, it

1:10:02

seems to have a similar kind of effect that it would on

1:10:05

us. That is, they are readier to

1:10:07

do things that would otherwise

1:10:09

previously have caused them some pain.

1:10:11

So when you get these kinds

1:10:14

of parallels, I think it's

1:10:16

reasonable to say

1:10:17

the balance of probability is that

1:10:20

they're conscious and can feel pain.

1:10:22

It's not certainty. I agree with that. But

1:10:26

I certainly think

1:10:27

it's a balance that we ought to give them. We're

1:10:30

giving them the benefit

1:10:32

of the doubt, in other words. The benefit of the doubt.

1:10:34

I was going to get there. I think your argument, which I mean

1:10:38

the strongest argument we make is that we don't know

1:10:40

and might as well give them the benefit of the doubt

1:10:42

on the whole. But

1:10:44

I guess

1:10:46

I constantly want to ask those skeptical questions.

1:10:48

The behavior of the fish, well, I

1:10:50

mean the fish

1:10:53

has by evolution behavior, which

1:10:55

is reproductive behavior,

1:10:58

wanting to be with a mate, need to eat, etc.,

1:11:00

etc., which may have nothing to do with

1:11:03

intent, clearly. And if

1:11:08

the thing that's produced like the shock causes

1:11:10

humans pain, it may cause, we don't know

1:11:13

that it's pain in a fish, it's just maybe

1:11:15

something that their internal homeostatic

1:11:17

system says it's best to avoid.

1:11:21

But the argument, I want to use your own

1:11:23

words against you in some

1:11:25

sense here. Well, I was taken

1:11:28

by this because you talk about plants and

1:11:31

whether plants are intelligent. It's interesting, you know,

1:11:33

a question. But you said

1:11:36

this advance in our understanding of plants shows

1:11:38

that they're not the passive objects that we may imagine

1:11:40

they are. Quite interestingly, I thought that was

1:11:42

very discussion. But this does not

1:11:44

show that they are conscious or capable of feeling pleasure

1:11:46

or pain. Self-driving cars

1:11:49

can communicate by sending electronic signals,

1:11:51

electrical signals are intelligent and

1:11:53

can learn from the mistakes, but they're not conscious.

1:11:57

It's true that plants are natural, evolved living beings where they are

1:11:59

conscious. self-driving cars or inanimate objects

1:12:01

made by humans. That is not,

1:12:04

however, sufficient reason for concluding that plants

1:12:06

are conscious. If we can design objects

1:12:08

that respond intelligently to their circumstances,

1:12:11

but without being conscious, then hundreds

1:12:13

of millions of years of evolution could produce a similar

1:12:15

outcome. And so I

1:12:17

would in some sense would say, couldn't you use that argument

1:12:20

for most animals? I

1:12:22

mean, 100 million years have caused

1:12:24

the animals to appear to be intelligent without

1:12:26

being conscious or self-aware

1:12:29

or even feeling the kind of

1:12:31

feelings that we do.

1:12:34

Well I mean, and obviously you're

1:12:36

right, I'm using

1:12:38

it to suggest that plants are complex, but are

1:12:40

not conscious. I

1:12:42

think in the case of vertebrates,

1:12:46

the evidence is much more

1:12:48

plausible that something similar has evolved

1:12:50

in them than in us because we

1:12:52

have a common origin and

1:12:55

the behavior is similar in the ways that I suggest

1:12:59

and the

1:13:01

anatomy and physiology are similar to some respects

1:13:03

and differ depending on what species we're talking

1:13:06

about. So I think it's

1:13:09

much more reasonable to say

1:13:12

it probably works in the same way and

1:13:14

there is some kind of awareness

1:13:16

as there is with us.

1:13:18

The more

1:13:20

difficult cases are the ones where there

1:13:22

isn't a common origin and I have to

1:13:24

acknowledge that isn't only plants, it's

1:13:26

also

1:13:27

invertebrates. So

1:13:30

I assume, this is kind of certain

1:13:32

but looking at

1:13:34

what others have written about it, I assume

1:13:37

that the common ancestor

1:13:39

of us and an octopus was not

1:13:42

a conscious being.

1:13:43

It seems like, we're talking maybe

1:13:46

as

1:13:46

much as 500 million years ago and

1:13:51

seems likely to have been a simple organism that

1:13:54

wasn't conscious. And yet when we

1:13:56

look at the behavior of the octopus, and of course millions

1:13:58

of people have now seen that octopus. my teacher

1:14:00

film. But even without

1:14:03

that, there's a lot of research about what

1:14:05

octopus can do and how they

1:14:08

are and so on.

1:14:10

So

1:14:12

yes, I think your objection

1:14:14

might apply to an octopus, to give me some

1:14:16

doubt, but I can't really say that. I'm

1:14:19

not given, I've already octopus,

1:14:21

octopi are intelligent. I stopped eating

1:14:23

them before

1:14:25

that film, but other thing, I mean, just amazing how intelligent

1:14:28

they are. But

1:14:31

nevertheless, people again, when

1:14:33

I tried to understand consciousness, people would say, yeah, we

1:14:36

have a common origin. But if you look at

1:14:38

the prefrontal cortex, if you look at the way

1:14:40

the neurons are developed

1:14:43

in that part of the human brain, we

1:14:45

share that at most with some of the great apes

1:14:48

and maybe some birds. And so there are differences.

1:14:50

So I guess the question is, and

1:14:53

this is the question, I think

1:14:55

you face yourself, where does

1:14:57

this stop? Does it ever stop?

1:14:59

Does it go all the way down to plants?

1:15:01

Or there is some line and I think of course, it's

1:15:04

hard to know. And I

1:15:06

guess the only answer one can give is, unless

1:15:08

there's a good reason, given the benefit

1:15:11

of the doubt, unless you need to,

1:15:13

give them benefit of doubt. But again, you drew the line,

1:15:15

I think somewhere originally between shrimps

1:15:17

and oysters, and I think you still do.

1:15:20

But, but yeah,

1:15:22

I still do. And, you know,

1:15:24

though, in general, I accept your

1:15:26

view, and we do have to eat something. So

1:15:28

that would be a reason for eating plants,

1:15:31

if anyway. But

1:15:33

I think also in evolutionary

1:15:35

terms, it's reasonable to think that consciousness is

1:15:38

more likely to evolve in beings

1:15:40

who can move away from danger

1:15:43

that they sense. And that

1:15:45

would be a reason for thinking that

1:15:47

there are a lot of animals, possibly even

1:15:49

insects, who can be conscious, but

1:15:52

not plants,

1:15:53

and not an oyster, because. But

1:15:56

again, single bacteria and an amoeba

1:15:58

can certainly move away from. Right.

1:15:59

Yeah, danger. That's right. But then it's

1:16:02

just so hard to imagine that

1:16:04

the capacity for consciousness can reside

1:16:07

in, you know, a single cell. Maybe that speciesist.

1:16:09

I don't know. Maybe it's hard to imagine.

1:16:13

It's what is it multicellular is. Yeah,

1:16:15

yeah, it's multicellularism. But maybe, maybe

1:16:17

next century, that'll become more reasonable than

1:16:20

species. I

1:16:22

think the key question is the difficult question. It's

1:16:25

a difficult question we can, none of us can answer, is

1:16:27

who can suffer.

1:16:28

And, and, and I think,

1:16:32

and that's a problem. That's a deep problem that

1:16:34

I don't know. No, each of us may decide

1:16:36

on our own level, because I don't, you know, if

1:16:38

we do some research, if we

1:16:41

try and be responsible. But, but

1:16:43

I think your point is that while it's,

1:16:46

it's debatable, there is clear

1:16:48

suffering in animals. We

1:16:52

should at the very least be worried about suffering of animals

1:16:54

where we can clearly see suffering. The

1:16:58

tenuous cases are maybe debatable.

1:17:01

And those tend to be the animals that we eat. And

1:17:05

I think that's a key point. And,

1:17:09

and so I want to go through the, some

1:17:12

of the arguments, chapter by chapter,

1:17:15

more or less, not quite chapter by chapter in your book. And

1:17:17

then I do want to again, raise some sort of, raise some

1:17:20

philosophical questions, perhaps, or things that came

1:17:22

to my mind. But the first version

1:17:24

of suffering, I was just most shocked

1:17:26

about, I guess, I mean, factory farming, I

1:17:28

think I knew about because we talked about a lot when

1:17:31

we had our dialogue in,

1:17:33

in,

1:17:33

in Phoenix, and I was kind of aware, but I still,

1:17:36

I'm always

1:17:39

amazed at the level that we cause suffering.

1:17:42

But, but the one thing that really surprised

1:17:44

me was animal experimentation was

1:17:47

namely, and now

1:17:49

this will get a whole new set of people angry

1:17:51

with me, but the,

1:17:54

the, the facile nature of most of these psychology

1:17:56

experiments, I was shocked. I'm

1:17:59

not a, you know, I'm not a, a psychologist, but you don't,

1:18:01

it doesn't seem to me you have to be, have a PhD in

1:18:03

psychology to see that the kind of ridiculous

1:18:05

tortures that are applied to animals

1:18:09

are both not only unnecessary, but

1:18:11

they are torture, and that they're not going to

1:18:13

give any insight into humans, which is what they're intended

1:18:16

to do. I mean, when you describe the way

1:18:18

that, that a wide variety

1:18:21

of animals, from dogs to monkeys

1:18:23

to other animals, are literally

1:18:25

tortured and, and, and, you know,

1:18:28

confined and, and remove and

1:18:30

not allowed to have stimuli to see if it's

1:18:32

going to in any way reproduce

1:18:35

the emotional disturbances that humans have

1:18:38

without realizing that the emotional

1:18:40

disturbances that humans have is intimately related

1:18:42

to our ability to communicate in our society and our

1:18:44

conscience. But doing that just seems

1:18:47

like there might not be experiments.

1:18:49

I mean, I just couldn't see the difference between them.

1:18:51

It's there's no, am I missing

1:18:53

something?

1:18:56

No, I don't really think you are missing something, unfortunately.

1:18:58

And I do think that these, you know, even

1:19:01

if you didn't care about the animal suffering, you should

1:19:03

think that they're basically

1:19:06

a waste of public funds that

1:19:08

is going into this work. And the description of them as torture

1:19:11

is in many cases appropriate too, because

1:19:13

what they're trying to do, for example, and

1:19:15

I describe

1:19:19

in the book, let me say the first

1:19:21

edition, I described series of experiments

1:19:22

that

1:19:24

were trying to produce what was called learned

1:19:26

helplessness in animal and

1:19:28

give them

1:19:29

inescapable electric shocks until

1:19:32

they became helpless and passively accepted the shock.

1:19:34

And that was in some ways supposed to

1:19:36

give us an opportunity to learn something about depression

1:19:40

in humans, you know, and that went

1:19:42

on since the 1950s or something. And obviously hasn't

1:19:45

helped us to overcome depression has

1:19:47

caused an immense amount of suffering. After a while, the

1:19:50

experiment is some of them acknowledge this,

1:19:52

that this is not helping us to learn about depression.

1:19:56

And you want to think, well, then they stop, but actually

1:19:58

what happened is that

1:19:59

line of experiments switched into looking

1:20:02

at post-traumatic stress disorder.

1:20:06

Now if you're going to try to study that

1:20:08

in animals, obviously you have to give

1:20:10

them traumatic stress in order

1:20:12

to

1:20:13

create this PTSD

1:20:17

and then you know maybe hope that

1:20:19

you'll somehow learn something about treating that in

1:20:21

humans.

1:20:22

But you know

1:20:24

so that's where the torture comes in. We've got

1:20:26

to give this animal such a traumatic experience

1:20:28

that it's going to somehow mimic PTSD

1:20:31

in humans. That's

1:20:33

a terrible thing in itself and I

1:20:35

won't describe now but people can read the book

1:20:38

to see exactly how they try to do it. Unbelievable.

1:20:41

I mean just you

1:20:43

can't help but what mind came up with some

1:20:45

of these things but anyway go on. Yeah that's

1:20:48

right but

1:20:50

you know so

1:20:51

in the end it doesn't

1:20:53

help because as you just said you know that obviously

1:20:55

has a lot to do with the way we see the world

1:20:58

and the way we relate. Well I can't understand

1:21:00

I mean I would never suggest that you

1:21:02

give humans traumatic stress but the

1:21:04

point is there are a lot of humans

1:21:07

with PTSD and you'd think the way to

1:21:09

try and understand it would be to study

1:21:11

them. That

1:21:12

would be a much better use

1:21:14

of our tax dollars absolutely.

1:21:17

No question about that. So okay so

1:21:19

that's the sort of low-hanging fruit. The obvious

1:21:21

examples of

1:21:23

animal experimentation and of course the

1:21:25

awful experimentation

1:21:28

was done animals for the perfume

1:21:30

and other industry which you know that's

1:21:32

a low-hanging fruit but

1:21:35

I do and so people should read the book up to

1:21:37

see some of this because it is surprising even

1:21:40

if you've heard some of it

1:21:43

but

1:21:44

you have argued that

1:21:47

animal testing is not always bad or at

1:21:50

least in principle is not always bad

1:21:52

if the benefit if there are clear benefits

1:21:55

for say humans.

1:21:57

So I want you to at least elaborate

1:21:59

on that because it appears contradictory.

1:22:01

I don't think it is necessarily, but it appears contradictory.

1:22:04

So I want,

1:22:04

I wanted you to... Let me just slightly

1:22:07

modify what you said. I don't think that

1:22:09

experiments are necessarily justified merely

1:22:11

by the fact that they have clear benefits for humans.

1:22:14

The benefits for humans, or

1:22:16

let's say since we're never certain when we do

1:22:18

experiments whether there will be benefits. So

1:22:20

let's say the expected value

1:22:23

of the benefits for humans, that is the benefits

1:22:25

discounted by the odds

1:22:27

that we won't achieve those benefits,

1:22:29

has to be greater

1:22:31

than the expected negative

1:22:33

value for animals

1:22:35

based on this principle that we talked

1:22:37

about before, equal consideration of interests.

1:22:40

So since it's

1:22:42

pretty certain that the animals will suffer

1:22:44

pain,

1:22:46

the expected value is basically

1:22:49

the value of, or the net, the

1:22:51

disvalue of the pain and suffering

1:22:53

that is going to be inflicted on them. So if there

1:22:55

is significant pain and suffering, there

1:22:57

has to

1:22:58

be either a reasonably high

1:23:01

probability of a benefit for humans,

1:23:03

or the benefit has to be very large for

1:23:05

a lot of humans.

1:23:07

And if that is the case,

1:23:09

and we are genuinely applying this principle

1:23:12

of equal consideration of interests, and

1:23:14

we are doing

1:23:15

everything we can to avoid inflicting

1:23:18

suffering on animals, including looking

1:23:20

for alternatives that don't use animals and

1:23:22

increasingly more alternatives

1:23:24

are being developed in various ways. And

1:23:27

if we are using animals

1:23:29

to minimise their suffering,

1:23:31

both in the experiment itself

1:23:33

and in terms of how they're housed, because that's another

1:23:36

low-hanging fruit, the

1:23:38

most confinement and miserable housing

1:23:40

of many animals. I want to talk about each of

1:23:42

those in the end.

1:23:45

But again, as a consequentialist,

1:23:48

as a utilitarian, I can't say

1:23:50

it's

1:23:51

always wrong to harm an

1:23:53

animal, no matter how great the benefit.

1:23:56

That would be

1:23:57

just like saying it's always wrong to tell

1:23:59

a lie.

1:23:59

them no matter how great the benefit. So

1:24:03

I don't believe that, but I do

1:24:05

believe that

1:24:06

you need to be as impartial as

1:24:08

you can in counting the interests

1:24:11

of the animals against the possible

1:24:13

benefits to humans.

1:24:15

And that's just not done in the present system,

1:24:18

right? There is no equal consideration of

1:24:20

interest for animals. But without speciesism

1:24:22

then, the same argument I think could be applied

1:24:24

to

1:24:25

experimenting on humans, right?

1:24:28

Well it could be. On infants

1:24:30

say or...

1:24:33

Yeah, if you tried

1:24:36

to do it on normal humans

1:24:39

then I guess there would be the

1:24:41

fact that this would become known and we

1:24:43

would all be fearful that you know humans

1:24:46

were being, I don't know how it was happening, maybe

1:24:49

they were going to hospital and then they were getting sent off

1:24:51

to the labs and so we wouldn't go into hospital and

1:24:53

we would die at a much greater rate or maybe

1:24:56

they were being kidnapped as they crossed

1:24:58

parks and so we wouldn't, parks

1:25:01

would be empty. So obviously for normal,

1:25:03

you know, aware humans I think

1:25:06

that would not be a good practice.

1:25:09

Yes, you could consider it maybe

1:25:11

for humans not capable of understanding

1:25:14

such things.

1:25:16

You mentioned infants, but you know

1:25:18

infants generally will

1:25:20

be loved by their parents who will understand

1:25:22

it. So

1:25:23

you're not going to find many now,

1:25:25

you know, you might say well that could be abandoned orphaned

1:25:28

infants or abandoned orphaned

1:25:31

profoundly retarded,

1:25:32

profoundly intellectually disabled humans.

1:25:37

Cool experiments. I mean I don't want to labour this

1:25:40

because we can get near the end. I mean you've

1:25:42

gotten it, I mean some people object

1:25:44

to

1:25:45

the rational arguments you've given that

1:25:47

regarding

1:25:49

infants and maybe people

1:25:52

in latter stages who don't warrant,

1:25:55

who are comatose,

1:25:58

but one could say yeah, well the infants have

1:26:00

parents and they'll get extremely suffer or

1:26:03

older people who are comatose.

1:26:05

You might want to say harvest their organs for

1:26:07

some for people to save people's life

1:26:10

and their families will be will be negatively

1:26:12

impacted but you might say that that's

1:26:14

the pain and suffering. That's the

1:26:16

that's the marginal cost but is it

1:26:18

can you save more you know are you helping more people

1:26:21

in the process and

1:26:22

I think you have to at least ask that question. Yeah

1:26:25

yeah you might and of course you know people do

1:26:27

leave their bodies for dissection

1:26:29

to help train medical students and so on. That's

1:26:31

after they're dead.

1:26:34

Right but you could I

1:26:36

would certainly be equally prepared to say

1:26:39

and should I ever be irreversibly comatose

1:26:42

you know not not dead not necessarily brain

1:26:45

dead as that is the fine which is another issue

1:26:47

but but I just should

1:26:49

have been somebody scans my brain and they

1:26:52

it's clear that I can never cover consciousness.

1:26:55

Yeah you could use my body for research that might

1:26:59

be more valuable than research on animals

1:27:01

because I am after all

1:27:03

a member of the species that you're trying

1:27:05

to benefit.

1:27:06

Yeah no I have to agree with you there and

1:27:08

well maybe we'll get to that near the end.

1:27:10

I mean I'm about my mother here when she's a hundred

1:27:12

and she died in the house and I have very

1:27:14

strong feelings about the efforts that were made

1:27:17

for no reason whatsoever to keep her

1:27:19

alive in my house and that

1:27:22

hurt that were very difficult. Anyway

1:27:24

we'll see if we get there but let's okay I

1:27:26

wanted to hit that little soft question so deep it's a deep

1:27:28

question and it's gonna cause people some

1:27:31

people anguish that we even had that discussion but

1:27:33

nevertheless that's what these that's the point

1:27:35

I think is people thinking about these questions

1:27:38

but I do want to now go to the

1:27:40

factory farming which some people may not be aware

1:27:42

of I mean I think if I if I you know

1:27:45

I just was

1:27:46

I was a young man and I you know

1:27:48

and can't understand

1:27:51

why

1:27:51

why don't we meet and basically said he was gonna

1:27:54

eat more meat

1:27:55

because I was arguing with him and

1:27:58

but but

1:28:00

People should be aware it's not that

1:28:03

that all that farms are happy

1:28:05

nice places all the time and that at

1:28:07

least in the west. In

1:28:10

the first world most agriculture is

1:28:12

factory farming and. And

1:28:15

in the process of that there is incredible suffering

1:28:18

so why don't why don't we i don't want to belabor this

1:28:20

for a long time but why don't we spend a little

1:28:22

time with each of the animals let's talk with chickens.

1:28:25

Okay, so if

1:28:27

we're talking about chickens raised for me.

1:28:31

One of the big problems is that they are

1:28:33

bred to grow extremely fast

1:28:36

they get to the way that which they're

1:28:38

sold in about

1:28:40

half the time or less from traditional

1:28:42

chicken raising. Now what's

1:28:44

wrong with that one thing that's wrong

1:28:47

is that their leg bones are

1:28:50

not maturing fast enough

1:28:52

and not strong enough really to hold their way.

1:28:55

So

1:28:56

experts who looked at their welfare picture

1:28:59

Professor Webster who founded a Center for animal

1:29:01

farm animal welfare in Bristol in England.

1:29:04

Says that for the last couple

1:29:06

of weeks of their lives it's like forcing someone

1:29:09

with arthritis to stand all day because

1:29:12

they're in pain from bearing their way.

1:29:15

You might ask well why don't they sit down there's

1:29:17

a reason for that too they're

1:29:19

really in

1:29:20

very crowded sheds and they're

1:29:22

droppings have fallen onto the floor mixed

1:29:25

with a litter that's there. And

1:29:27

it's not even cleaned out between each block

1:29:30

of birds to the

1:29:32

they're only six or seven weeks old when they saw.

1:29:34

And if you have a moist atmosphere

1:29:37

with a lot of bird droppings

1:29:40

that forms a caustic solution,

1:29:42

so if they sit on

1:29:44

the

1:29:45

on the litter

1:29:46

they actually get

1:29:47

caustic burns alkaline burns

1:29:50

on their thighs. And

1:29:52

their breasts and that's painful to them, so

1:29:54

they don't sit for long period.

1:29:57

Now there's a second aspect of this

1:29:59

growing.

1:29:59

so fast or being bred to grow so

1:30:02

fast. That is just, you know, something

1:30:04

that people never think about and it just shows

1:30:07

what the whole system is like.

1:30:10

The parents of these birds also have

1:30:12

to have huge appetites and grow very fast.

1:30:15

But

1:30:16

if you gave them as much as they want to eat, as

1:30:18

you give the young chickens,

1:30:20

they would be so fat when they were sexually mature

1:30:23

that

1:30:23

they would never be able to mate. The

1:30:26

male just could not get to the right place

1:30:28

on the female from this fat body

1:30:30

that

1:30:31

he would have.

1:30:32

So to do that, to

1:30:34

get them sexually mature and survive,

1:30:36

you have to starve them basically. The standard

1:30:39

thing is you skip a day feed. You

1:30:42

feed them only every second day

1:30:44

and these are birds bred to have great appetites.

1:30:46

So each, every second day

1:30:48

they're really hungry looking for more food everywhere

1:30:51

and that's just, you know, that's

1:30:54

just something the factory

1:30:56

farmers, industrial farmers would do. That's the way to

1:30:58

produce chicken cheek length.

1:31:00

And the fact that, I guess the other thing that comes

1:31:03

to mind for me is

1:31:06

that they're constrained in such

1:31:08

small spaces. They can't turn around. They can't... These

1:31:11

are the egg laying hens there, right? Yeah, yeah.

1:31:14

It's the egg laying ones who are, yeah, again, really

1:31:16

constrained the egg laying ones. And so you talk about

1:31:19

eggs because I do eat eggs. So,

1:31:21

but I always eat eggs that say free range.

1:31:24

You should have in Canada there

1:31:26

and Prince Edward Island, you should have access

1:31:28

to good free range eggs. Yeah. They

1:31:30

will not come from hens who are kept in cages.

1:31:32

They will come from hens who not only are

1:31:34

page free, which is a label widely used

1:31:37

in the United States, but can still be

1:31:39

a very crowded system, although not

1:31:41

in small cages. But

1:31:44

free range should mean that they're able to go

1:31:46

outside, at least in

1:31:48

suitable weather, and range

1:31:51

around, pecking the grass, chase butterflies,

1:31:54

or whatever.

1:31:55

And that isn't a bad life.

1:31:57

So if you have that...

1:32:00

then you could say, well, that's

1:32:02

a reasonable deal. The bird gets a decent

1:32:05

life, the shorter life the hen

1:32:07

would normally have, because once the rate

1:32:09

of lay drops off, they'll send the

1:32:11

hen to be slaughtered. But yeah,

1:32:15

it's not too bad a life. So it's

1:32:17

okay to eat those free-range eggs, is that right? I

1:32:19

think so. I must say, I don't know what

1:32:21

the conditions are like in winter in Canada.

1:32:23

In Australia, where they can be at all year

1:32:26

round, but probably not where

1:32:28

you are. But yeah,

1:32:30

look, it's a lot better. So, you know, I think...

1:32:33

It's an interesting question, because I've thought about that.

1:32:36

Okay, let's, and pigs now, which are, who

1:32:38

are extremely smart. Let's

1:32:40

start saying that. And what happens to them?

1:32:43

So why don't you mention pigs? Sure.

1:32:45

Well, pigs are also standardly

1:32:48

kept inside.

1:32:50

They never go outside

1:32:50

at

1:32:53

all in their lives. They're very crowded.

1:32:56

But the worst problems are for the

1:32:59

mothers, the mother pigs, the breeding

1:33:01

stars,

1:33:02

who are still commonly kept,

1:33:05

this is in the United States, certainly commonly

1:33:07

kept in individual stalls,

1:33:10

where they can't turn around. They have nothing

1:33:12

to do all day except stand up and lie down.

1:33:14

And for a little while, they get some food, which they

1:33:17

eat quickly. And

1:33:21

like the chickens,

1:33:23

the breeding chickens I was talking about,

1:33:25

they too have

1:33:27

to be kept fairly hungry, because if you fed

1:33:29

them as much as they have an appetite

1:33:31

to eat, because their offspring also

1:33:34

should put on weight as fast as possible, they

1:33:37

would also get too fat.

1:33:40

So, yeah, they're

1:33:42

also likely to be hungry, as

1:33:45

well as being very restricted in their movement. I

1:33:48

would try, they're also bred to be, I mean,

1:33:50

they become very fat so much quicker than

1:33:53

pigs in the wild would be. Oh

1:33:55

yeah, absolutely. That's true of the ones who do get

1:33:57

certain market here, even though they're...

1:33:59

killed fairly young, but

1:34:03

they still are already quite large in fat. But

1:34:07

it's

1:34:07

the parent pigs

1:34:10

who have more health problems with their

1:34:12

breed and their appetite and they often become

1:34:14

lame too because their legs don't really

1:34:17

support their weight again. And the behaviour also,

1:34:19

my understanding is that we think of pigs

1:34:21

as filthy in these things, but

1:34:24

in fact that if

1:34:26

they're sort of, I don't

1:34:27

know what they want to call it, wild, but if they're not, that

1:34:31

kind of behaviour

1:34:32

is not observed, right? No,

1:34:34

if they're, so if pigs are naturally

1:34:36

forest animals and if you

1:34:39

leave them in the forest, they're quite clean.

1:34:41

They'll have a dunging area which is away from

1:34:43

where they sleep and the sow will

1:34:45

build a nest with twigs and leaves

1:34:48

before she has her

1:34:49

piglets and she'll

1:34:51

keep that clean

1:34:53

as well. So yeah, no,

1:34:56

it's only when they can

1:34:57

find that they become

1:34:59

filthy. It's true in the

1:35:02

factory farms, they're quite often kept on

1:35:04

slats, on metal slatted floors which are hosed

1:35:06

down. So then they're not filthy,

1:35:08

but they're also not comfortable because they're

1:35:11

just lying on this. They're not

1:35:13

given any straw or bedding because that

1:35:16

has to be changed and they cost money and labour.

1:35:19

So they're just on bare concrete or slats.

1:35:22

Cows.

1:35:24

Well cows, particularly the dairy industry,

1:35:27

the real problem there that people often again

1:35:29

don't see is that a cow will

1:35:31

only give milk if she's had

1:35:33

a calf within a certain period, let's

1:35:35

say roughly a year. So

1:35:38

you have to make cows pregnant

1:35:40

each year if they're to continue

1:35:44

to give milk.

1:35:45

And of course cows are mammals and

1:35:47

there's a close bond between the mother and her calf

1:35:50

and to take the calf

1:35:52

away from the mother

1:35:54

causes her prolonged distress. Dairy

1:35:57

farmers will tell you that if the cows were to

1:35:59

be pregnant, they would be pregnant.

1:35:59

in a particular spot. Usually

1:36:02

now these cars are intensive and they're not moving

1:36:04

around but in my traditional farms

1:36:06

if the cars could

1:36:08

walk past the spot where their car was

1:36:10

taken from them even even weeks

1:36:13

or months ago some of

1:36:15

them would still stop and look around and call

1:36:17

for their car because they would remember

1:36:19

that that was where they lost their car

1:36:21

and the fate of the car isn't good on other goods.

1:36:24

Yeah especially the one that's

1:36:26

for veal but I

1:36:29

want to

1:36:31

ask about this for personal reasons because

1:36:33

I live I'm surrounded I think by a lot of dairy

1:36:35

farms and I actually like I

1:36:38

drive by and I see all these cows in the field during

1:36:41

the day and when I come by at night

1:36:43

I see them all cows coming in

1:36:45

from the field lining up into the well-lit

1:36:48

area where they and then at night

1:36:50

I see them all kind of lined up there and it just

1:36:52

sort of it looks like a nice life and

1:36:55

I don't know if it's just because I live in PEI or but

1:36:58

on the other hand I've also I was

1:37:00

also surprised a neighbor of mine was a

1:37:02

dairy farmer and he was he's gone

1:37:04

to Africa to try and help them improve

1:37:08

the output of their cows

1:37:10

for milk and stuff and

1:37:12

he and I think you were and

1:37:14

it surprised me because he said here they get like 40 liters

1:37:18

per cow or something immense number

1:37:20

so you'd think it'd be the kind of factory

1:37:23

farming that would be bad but I don't see it so I

1:37:25

don't know am I missing something or or

1:37:29

I don't want to comment on the cows

1:37:31

and Prince Edward Island because I don't really know anything

1:37:34

about them whether the productivity is

1:37:36

because they're given supplemental

1:37:38

rations or because of the way they've bred I honestly

1:37:41

don't know but the

1:37:43

majority of milk produced in affluent countries

1:37:46

is not from cows that are grazing

1:37:48

in fields it's intensive and

1:37:51

the public came to realize that over

1:37:53

the summer this year I don't know if you read

1:37:56

there was a barn fire in Texas

1:37:58

barn is a bit of an inverted commas worthy

1:37:59

which is 18,000

1:38:02

cows, right?

1:38:03

So there were 18,000 cows that

1:38:05

were locked up in this barn and

1:38:08

that, you know, was they weren't going out,

1:38:10

you know, you can't have field trading. They

1:38:14

were intensively farmed, that's where

1:38:17

they were kept and then food was brought

1:38:19

to them.

1:38:20

So they were not moving around, they

1:38:22

were not out there grazing and,

1:38:24

you

1:38:25

know, that's the way of

1:38:27

big milk production, unfortunately, in a lot

1:38:29

of countries. And I'm keeping, I suppose

1:38:31

one could say the cow, as you say, that keeping the cows pregnant

1:38:34

and moving the calves is, we'll

1:38:37

get to that. I want to talk about many animals

1:38:39

later on, but yeah, I mean, I

1:38:41

have to say, I don't, because I've lacked those reasons,

1:38:43

I have soy milk or

1:38:45

milk anyway, but so I

1:38:47

feel better when I see the cows.

1:38:51

There are plenty of non-dairy alternatives. Yeah,

1:38:53

yeah, yeah, yeah. The

1:38:55

thing that was, again, hits home for

1:38:57

me and a little bit of surprise, well,

1:39:00

not quite surprised, because my wife,

1:39:02

she was actually worked on big fishing

1:39:05

boats when she was going through college.

1:39:07

But fish, again,

1:39:09

I have

1:39:12

been a pescatarian in that sense of eating

1:39:14

fish and not meat.

1:39:17

And it's an issue

1:39:19

that I'm grappling with. And

1:39:23

certainly we cause incredible distress. I

1:39:25

mean, the fish that are picked up in nets and just basically

1:39:28

suffocate or

1:39:29

are crushed. I

1:39:31

mean, huge, I mean, these are factory fishing

1:39:34

boats. These are not,

1:39:35

you know, and, but

1:39:36

why don't you talk

1:39:39

about that a little bit? Because I didn't realize the numbers are like trillions.

1:39:43

Well, it's really hard to know because

1:39:46

the statistics are kept in tons rather than

1:39:48

individual animals. But

1:39:51

the best estimate that I've seen

1:39:54

suggests that the number of fish caught

1:39:57

until each year is something

1:39:58

that's been

1:39:59

between 1 and 2.7

1:40:02

trillion

1:40:03

fish,

1:40:05

which is just a completely mind-boggling

1:40:08

number of course. And there is basically

1:40:11

no humane slaughter for them. So

1:40:13

they are suffering in various ways

1:40:16

depending whether they, as you said,

1:40:18

hold up in nets or whether they caught on long

1:40:20

lines, you know, lines, kilometres long

1:40:22

with thousands of hooks on them.

1:40:25

That's pretty bad and

1:40:27

for the sustainability of the oceans it's

1:40:30

obviously very bad.

1:40:32

But there is also intensive

1:40:35

fish production and, you

1:40:37

know, when, for example, if people

1:40:39

buy salmon, 70% of salmon

1:40:42

is now armed salmon, not free

1:40:45

caught salmon. And the

1:40:47

problem with that is that,

1:40:49

well the number of problems, one is that the salmon who

1:40:51