A utilitarian could argue that—even if their lives were fleeting and miserable—the factory-farmed animals would otherwise not exist were it not for their use as livestock. Would it be less ethical to have prevented their existence entirely?

[A] The existence of these animals contributes to the net quantity of happiness in our world. Even if it's very little on an individual scale, it's a significant amount as a whole. Wouldn't it, therefore, be better that they do exist, even in such conditions?

[B] Does a livestock animal's life not have a value in itself? Even if its life was objectively awful, it was given the opportunity to experience it. Would it be more cruel to—as argued by pro-life individuals—deny it the chance to experience life, no matter how such a life turned out in the end?

[C] Relatively speaking, perhaps the animal did not have such a miserable life as we imagined. From the perspective of an outsider, growing up in a cage sucks. But, maybe an animal would enjoy being constantly given access to food and water for no effort. We can generalize based on scientific data, but much like humans, there could be lazy animals that enjoy the lifestyle.

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Sorry for the huge wall of text. It's a bit of a complex theme.

At its core I think that my ethic stance is best described as anti-realism. There's no intrinsic value; value is assigned by the subject. In turn, each individual (incl. me) assigns values due to a bunch of different factors: defending one's own interests, instinct (kin selection), culture/ideology, Realpolitik, or even on a whim.

Thus moral premises (or their absence - moral nihilism) are individual and arbitrary. I personally picked "weighted selfishness" and kin selection as two of mine. This leads to some sort of "rank", like: myself > my close relatives > other humans > other primates > other vertebrates > other animals > other living beings. Some individuals are sub-ranked higher due to their effect on individuals on higher ranks (e.g. someone's pet dog is above a stray dog, my lemon tree is above other non-animal living beings, etc.)

Beyond that it works like a "weighted utilitarianism" where life, general well-being and happiness of a higher category are more important than the ones of lower categories. It works symmetrically though - for example a jaguar hunting a human being is still moral, even if the jaguar was somehow intelligent. (And so is the self-defence of the potential human. Or of a pig against a human.)

Based on that: battery farm is for me less moral than free range, but still within acceptable morality - because it benefits beings high in my priority (humans) by a lot.

Animal lives matter a bit. Animals closer to us matter more. I'm not sure however if their simple existence has a positive "happiness" value, it's just referring to the life itself.