Here are a few contemporary works, some of which are bleeding edge current:

• Craig Bourne - A Future for Presentism
• Ross Cameron - The Moving Spotlight: An Essay on Time and Ontology
• Ned Markosian - "A Defense of Presentism"
• Trenton Merricks - "Persistence, Parts, and Presentism"
• Huw Price - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time
• Arthur Prior - Papers on Time and Tense
• Ted Sider - Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time

Beyond just looking at these books and articles, though, look at other works by the same authors (and, of course, whatever is in their various bibliographies). Also, the philosophy of time intersects with other issues in metaphysics--specifically, the problem of empty names. Therefore, I would also recommend the book Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence (edited by Anthony Everett and Thomas Hofweber).

it makes sense to give a weak example. — shmik

The problem is that the example is bad.

Of course, I didn't expect anyone to interpret me as saying that if a farmer letting 2 of his cows out into the field on one occasion doesn't reduce their suffering during the food production process, then my argument falls apart. — shmik

No one has interpreted it that way. If you think so, then you are thoroughly confused.

I think most the claims to charity in this thread are garbage — shmik

Well, all of the claims about charity on this thread have been made by you and Soylent, with most of them made by you. So if you want to dismiss them as garbage, I won't object.

Anyway I didn't realize that vegans don't sleep, that sleeping was a non-vegan practice. — shmik

Equivocation. Calling something a non-vegan practice is not the same as saying vegans don't do it. It is to say that it is not part of or entailed by the veganism.

So now that we have dispensed with the obligatory sparring — shmik

I'm not sparring. Perhaps you are. The fact that anyone had the gall to disagree with you on the other thread clearly set you off for some reason, and you've been trying to score points rather than make productive contributions ever since. But all I've been trying to do is get your objection expressed in a way that was both sensible and clear. We've finally achieved that, so I'm satisfied.

you agree that my point needs to be addressed in the context of this argument, good. — shmik

Well, of course I do. Once deciphered, they're similar to the points I made a month ago. Again, this was never about disagreeing with you. This was about the clarification process that is central to philosophy. What you are saying now is much different in form and expressed content than what you started with, even if it reflects what you were trying to get at all along. And given your incessant claim that Soylent's argument wasn't clear enough, it seems odd to exempt yourself from the same sort of demands. Surely that is not your intention, in which case there should be nothing wrong with me trying to get clear on what exactly it is you are trying to say.

Um, no it's not. — shmik

If the example isn't evidence (even if just by way of illustration), then what was the purpose of presenting it?

It's a rhetorical device whereby the example given is very weak to show that the conditions for the claim being false are easily satisfied. — shmik

Yeah, that's called "evidence."

A charitable reading would not argue that the example is false but rather look at what the argument is implying. — shmik

I was doing both at the same time, whether you realize it or not.

But this isn't a charitable way of reading the argument, it is false if I have any non vegan practices which don't contribute to gratuitous suffering caused by food production. — shmik

First of all, charity does not require us to interpret a claim in a way that makes it true at all costs. Second, you don't actually mean if you have any non-vegan practices. I sleep every night, and my sleeping at night does not contribute to gratuitous suffering caused by food production. But that clearly does not disprove (or in any way undermine) the claim. What you mean is something like "non-vegan food consumption practices."

Now, I agree that the pro-vegan is committed to either making an exception here or forwarding the (rather implausible) claim that these behaviors somehow contribute to the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals. But note that Soylent has already opted for the former strategy in dealing with other problems. In the OP, he makes what he calls a "semantic distinction." According to this, veganism is to be defined as "the practice of not using sentient animals in our food production." He introduced the distinction to avoid an objection I made regarding non-sentient animals, but presumably he could use it (with minor adjustments) against these cases as well. If the argument is not committed to "standard" veganism, then it might have room in its definition of "veganism" for these odd cases.

Nor is this unprecedented: Singer's vegetarianism allows for eating cows that get struck by lightning, for instance. Cora Diamond takes him to task for this, but the dispute ultimately comes down to whether vegetarianism is aimed at an external goal (e.g., reducing suffering) or an internal goal (e.g., improving one's character). The same could dispute could be replayed among vegans, and the content of Soylent's argument strongly suggests that he would take the Singer route.

(So again, @Soylent, what do you have to say here? If you won't carve out an exception for these cases, then it would seem that shmik's objection does, at last, succeed.)

Before I say another word, have you actually taken the time to read the thread and notice the various clarifications that have been given along the way? Because so far, it seems like you have not. Furthermore, do you have any response to this post? Because if not, then it seems like you don't a leg to stand on as far of the topic of this thread—the logical validity of the argument—is concerned.

This is pretty weird, trying to separate your contribution from the farming practices. — shmik

Good thing I'm not doing that, then.

Are you arguing that at first I had a contribution, then that contribution disappeared, but also that it was not my contribution it was the farmers? — shmik

No.

If you argue that letting a couple cows out one evening isn't part of farming practices, just the farmers whim, then you are going after the example, not my main point. — shmik

Of course I am going after the example. The example was your evidence, so the point doesn't stand if the evidence for it isn't any good. But that doesn't mean I think letting the cows out isn't part of farming practices. The point is that there is a difference between the farmer letting the cows out because we convince him to and the farmer letting the cows out because he does so on a whim. If he does so on a whim, then our actions didn't cause it. That seems pretty straightforwardly true. Therefore, unless the example is modified to make it such that our actions are leading to the cows being let out, it seems strange to attribute to us any reduction in their suffering that letting them out causes.

So there are numerous ways to read P6 (again, because it was created in such a vague way). — shmik

If you're not concerned with reading it correctly, then yes.

You here are presenting a reading that all of the personal contribution is preventable iff a vegan diet is adopted. — shmik

No, I am not. In fact, I am saying that we should understand P6 as claiming that so long as we have not adopted a vegan diet, some of our preventable contribution to the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices remains. Such a reading leaves open the possibility that there are other ways of reducing the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices and that we may have other duties regarding the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices. It is a minimal strategy: whatever our other duties may be, we are at least obligated to adopt a vegan diet.

Since this seems to be so confusing for some people, here is the revised version of the argument:

P1 If any gratuitous suffering is preventable and known, then it is wrong to allow said gratuitous suffering.
P2 If some nonhuman animals are sentient and food production practices would constitute gratuitous suffering in humans, then food production practices constitute gratuitous suffering in some nonhuman animals.
P3 Some nonhuman animals are sentient.
P4 Food production practices would constitute gratuitous suffering in humans.
C1 Food production practices constitute gratuitous suffering in some nonhuman animals. (from P2, P3 and P4)
P5 If food production practices constitute gratuitous suffering in some nonhuman animals, then we know of some gratuitous suffering.
C2 We know of some gratuitous suffering. (from C1 and P5)
P6 Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet.
P7 If it is possible to adopt a vegan diet, then gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable.
P8 It is possible to adopt a vegan diet.
C3 Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable. (from P6, P7 and P8)
C4 It is wrong to allow gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices. (from P1, C2 and C3)
P9 If it is wrong to allow gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices and gratuitous suffering caused by food productions practices is preventable if and only if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet, then a vegan diet ought to be adopted by all who are in a position to do so.
C5 A vegan diet ought to be adopted by all who are in a position to do so. (from P6, C4 and P9)


And here it is (again) schematized in propositional calculus:

Let:
A = some gratuitous suffering is preventable
B = some gratuitous suffering is known
C = it is wrong for someone in a position to prevent gratuitous suffering to allow it
D = some nonhuman animals are sentient
E = food production practices would constitute gratuitous suffering in humans
G = food production practices constitute gratuitous suffering in non-human animals
H = it is possible to adopt a vegan diet
I = a vegan diet ought to be adopted by all who are in a position to adopt it

Argument:
P1. (A & B) --> C
P2. (D & E) --> G
P3. D
P4. E
C1. G
P5. G --> B
C2. B
P6. A <=> H
P7. H --> A
P8. H
C3. A
C4. C
P9. (C & (A <=> H)) --> I
C5. I

Since the topic of this thread is the validity of the argument, I would like to know where the invalid move is made in this schematization.

The issue is that if one Y refuses to donate then this relieves the others of their obligation to donate because their donations alone cannot save X, and their donations were only obligatory on the premise that it would save X. — Michael

Which means it was never true that all Ys ought to save X. So again, the argument is unsound. And more importantly, it is not analogous to anything that has been argued here.

The point is that P6 needs to be more specific in light of this. — Michael

What both you and shmik seem to have missed is that P6 is one of the premises that was modified right away. You keep going after the version in the OP, missing the point that the version found there was discarded ages ago. The revised P6 says "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet." The explicit statement of who is to be adopting a vegan diet then comes up in the revised P9 (and then the revised C5).

But as you said to shmik earlier, "So the fact that you cannot change your local supermarket's buying patterns alone is irrelevant." Except it isn't irrelevant. If I can't change my local supermarket's buying patterns alone then the second premise above fails. — Michael

Context matters, Michael. The point of that comment was that changing your supermarket's buying patterns isn't the only way to reduce or eliminate one's contribution to gratuitous suffering, therefore the fact that you cannot change your local supermarket's buying patterns alone is irrelevant. Nice try, though.

The current argument seems to be saying something like "the combination of these people ought to adopt a vegan diet because gratuitous suffering caused by food production is preventable if and only if the combination of these people adopt a vegan diet (and one is obligated to prevent gratuitous suffering) — Michael

And my point has been that it doesn't say this, no matter how many people want to misread it that way.

Neither me nor Michael are arguing that this is not the case. — shmik

Then the two of you shouldn't have presented your comments as objections. If I point out that "all" entails "some" and you guys respond with some version of "no, it doesn't," then the logical force of your response is a denial of the claim that "all" entails "some."

The examples we are presenting are not meant to be counter examples to this. They are meant to be analogous to Soylent's argument. — shmik

But as I have pointed out several times, Soylent's argument is not committed to anything like what you and Michael have accused it of, particularly after my suggested revisions were accepted. So if the examples were meant to be analogous to anything in the argument, they have failed at that.

So when you say that the examples have errors you are just agreeing with the point. — shmik

Except the main error I am pointing out is that they aren't analogous to anything in the argument. I can agree that the sun rises in the east while continuing to maintain that this has nothing to do with whether or not Socrates is a man.

It's meant to be analogous to a version of the argument which from looking at Soylents posts, he upholds, even though you yourself think the version is problematic. — shmik

Well, Soylent is free to correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think the proper interpretation of his posts has him committed to "if the set {x, y, z} is S, then x is S, y is S, and z is S." I think he has been saying the same thing as me, albeit in different terms: "if all x's are S, then x₁ is S, x₂ is S, x₃ is S..."

(So how about it, @Soylent? Which do you mean?)

But in any case, I have only been defending the logical validity of the argument with my suggested revisions. No one, even Soylent seems to have ever thought that the original version presented in the OP was free of problems.

Again, you are fighting an invisible battle to prove that all -> some while we are speaking about the distinction between the set and the members of the set. — shmik

For one, I'm not trying to prove it. I have no need to prove it. It has long been proven, and I am just pointing it out that fact to two people who have denied it (whether they meant to or not). For another, I'm pretty sure the "battle" isn't invisible. I can see it, you and Michael must be able to see it in order to respond, and I suspect anyone else reading the thread can see it as well. And finally, if you and Michael have been trying to talk about the distinction between the set and the members of the set, then you have done an incredibly bad job of it. I made the same point at the outset of the discussion, and you've both been directing your objections at me. Moreover, you've been presenting those objections as responses to my statement of the logical fact that "all" entails "some." Only now has either of you come out with what you were supposedly saying all along. It's like putting the blank space on a tape at the beginning instead of at the end.

Read the responses to this as if I had interpreted it to be maintaining a version of the argument. The version that used the incorrect move from speaking about the set as a whole to speaking about the elements.
Then when you said all implies some, I took that as you reaffirming that incorrect version.
Maybe then you'll see why people have responded to you by bringing up this issue, and get a different picture of how the thread progressed. — shmik

I understand how your error came about. I just don't understand why you are so keen to defend it.

All Ys ought to save X.
X can be saved iff all Ys donate.
Therefore all Ys ought to donate. — Michael

Okay, but what's the problem here? If the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. But if you think the conclusion is false, then you ought to reject one of the premises. That's why it's quixotic to go up against the rule: if it's not the case that some S are P, it's not the case that all S are P.

If all of these 11 players make a full football team then do some of these 11 players make a full football team? — Michael

It depends on whether you mean "all" in the logical sense or not. If you really mean that each player makes a football team (which is what it means in the language of logic to say that all of these 11 players make a full football team), then it would follow that some of these 11 players make a full football team. We would have a valid—but unsound—argument. But what you actually mean is "the combination of these 11 players makes a full football team," which does not involve the logical "all" and therefore does not entail the logical "some." Surely you know this, so surely you realize that this attempt at a counterexample is fatuous.

So I think a distinction needs to be made between "the set of people S is X" and "each member of the set of people S are X". — Michael

I've already made this point myself, so I'm not sure how this constitutes a response to anything I've said.

With respect to the OP, is C5 to be understood as "the set of people who can adopt a vegan diet ought adopt a vegan diet" or as "each member of the set of people who can adopt a vegan diet ought adopt a vegan diet"? — Michael

The latter. This is clearer if one bears in mind the revisions I suggested—and Soylent accepted—early on in the thread (which transformed C5 into "a vegan diet ought to be adopted by all who are in a position to do so").

But if the prevention of gratuitous suffering depends on contingent responsibilities (i.e. that a sufficient number of people adopt a vegan diet) then the obligation to adopt a vegan diet depends on contingent responsibilities. — Michael

But my point here, where the topic is validity, has been that the argument does not make the obligation contingent. And my point elsewhere has been that the argument should not make the obligation contingent. In order to succeed, the argument needs to be framed in terms of individual duties. And the most charitable way of reading the argument requires us to understand it as doing exactly that. So the objection is irrelevant. It basically says, "if we change the argument in such-and-such a way, it's invalid!" But of course, any argument can be made invalid if we're allowed to fiddle with the premises however we like.

Some of your contribution can be preventable by changes in the practices of your supplier. — shmik

But then it's not your contribution. It may be the case that boycotting a farm could result in the farmer changing his practices. But your example of the farmer making a personal decision to let two of his cows out one afternoon has only to do with his contribution. Your contribution (or at least, the relevant portion of your contribution given the additional stipulations Soylent has made on this thread) comes from factors that you can personally control (including, but not limited to, the demand you add to the market).

I'm not unsympathetic to the point about changing our farming practices. I've already stated that I think everything that counts as gratuitous can be separated from the fact of an animal's eventual slaughter. I've also stated that I think P6 is false. I just don't think you've hit on the reason that it's false. You're still worried about the logic of it and missing the fact that the premise doesn't say that adopting a vegan diet is the only way to reduce your contribution to the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices.

Nothing in P6 says there is no other way to reduce the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices or even your contribution to it. All it requires is that one's contribution cannot be fully eliminated without adopting a vegan diet. Again, I think this is false. But it's not false due to the ability of the farmer to let his cows out from time to time.

Would you not agree that, in practice, non-global villages are generally formed, in large majority, by people sharing the same cultures and values? — Agustino

If we're talking about literal villages, then sure. But then they expand. Or they spawn a new generation of inhabitants, which ends up split between those who accept the old values and those who have new ideas. They form countries. The United States was formed by a group of people who shared certain key values, but disagreed on a lot of other things. Ideological divisions within the Communist Party ensured that the USSR was always run by a paranoiac. And the whole point of Rawlsian political philosophy is to separate the right from the good, allowing people to live as they choose so long as they live within the law. It is fundamentally an acknowledgment that you can't force uniformity onto a society—even if you begin with it.

But don't you think that in practice this is what will happen? — Agustino

When groups come together, they often blend some of their practices. This is just the natural process of cultural exchange, and it happens regardless of whether we have borders or not. But I do not think that putting people into a single state will lead to the elimination of all differences between groups. We see cultural differences survive political integration all the time during times of mass immigration. In the US, for instance, there are still many distinct cultural communities despite several of the groups having immigrated over a century ago.

Social and economic pressures frequently relegating the Irish and the Italians to the same areas when they first came over, yet they managed to remain distinct and maintain their culture—even as many of them intermarried. The United States has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel and the largest Hispanic population outside of Mexico. It has thriving Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese communities. It has a long history of bilingual education despite attempts to outlaw languages other than English (attempts that were later declared unconstitutional). All of this sparks debates from time to time, of course, but precisely because political integration has not eliminated cultural differences.

Why should we want to be a global village? — Agustino

For the same reasons we form non-global villages (e.g., social cooperation, economic benefits, a unified justice system).

There are different peoples, different cultures and different values on the face of the Earth. — Agustino

This is just as true within states as it is between states. Eliminating borders doesn't require eliminating differences (as I noted above when clarifying what cosmopolitans actually claim).

True I do have a lot of trouble constructing a coherent position from your posts. — shmik

And yet no one else does.

Well could you think of another possible way that some gratuitous suffering could be prevented? — shmik

P6 isn't about gratuitous suffering simpliciter, though. It's about gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices. Letting the cows out one afternoon doesn't stop them from being slaughtered and processed for food. And while it may give them some pleasure, it doesn't prevent their eventual suffering. This is particularly important given that the argument is concerned with eliminating our contribution to the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals caused by food production practices (and not just reducing it). Just finding another way to reduce the suffering doesn't affect the claim that one might have to adopt a vegan diet to eliminate one's contribution to the suffering.

Moreover, the argument seems to be concerned with getting individuals to refrain from personally contributing to the gratuitous suffering of non-human animals. In that case, P6 should be understood as saying something like "if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet, then (your contribution to) gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable; and if it is not possible to adopt a vegan diet, then (your contribution to) gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is not preventable." This might be glossed as "you can't prevent your contribution to gratuitous suffering without adopting a vegan diet."

I agree that this is false. If a non-human animal can be given a decent life and a humane death, I think it becomes much harder to argue that its suffering is gratuitous (though this would get us into issues with the definition of gratuitous suffering on offer). But nothing about the biconditional requires veganism to eliminate one's contribution to gratuitous suffering of non-human animals on its own—which makes sense as it would be rather odd if the argument allowed one to work as a butcher so long as their diet was vegan. (Indeed, this is one reason that veganism is traditionally defined as going beyond diet alone.)

Yeah, it's a pity the system says "cancelled" instead of "expired". Makes us all look bad :). — Baden

You know, that's the kind of point that the developers might actually be sympathetic to. It might be worth asking them to change it (or even suggesting it as being in their own interest to do so since it makes sites running on their software look better).

I have no particular interest to defend this argument beyond what I feel is intellectually honest, but I will address some comments for which I feel I can offer a response. — Soylent

No problem! This has been fun, even if it is just an exercise.

It's not that there may not be further obligations for people to act, but at the basic level I want to focus on the most general obligation applicable to the most/all people. — Soylent

Right. This is the point to focus on. You let me push you into a corner before by saying that we don't have certain obligations, but you had no need to make that concession. All you needed to say was "regardless of whatever other obligations we may have, we have this obligation of omission" (which is where you have now landed). After all, the argument loses nothing by remaining silent about what other obligations we may have.

I'm inclined to say yes — Soylent

Again, I think this is the correct response (strategically, at least). You didn't answer the tattooing question directly, but I take it from your response that you think the concern about freedom is covered by the "unreasonable cost (due to psychological harm)" clause. Is this correct?

It needs to mean that each individual's (from the set of people who can go vegan) adoption of veganism has an affect on the gratuitous suffering. I'm pretty certain both me and Postmodern Beatnik agree on that but it seems that we misunderstand each other often enough that I can't be sure. — shmik

Or at least, you misunderstand me enough that you can't be sure. But in this case, you are correct that we are in agreement here.

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all humans (and presumably animals as well) belong to a single global community, with shared values, morals, etc. Having such a community seems to me to be a great way to stop international conflict. — darthbarracuda

This doesn't strike me as either an accurate or an informative explanation of cosmopolitanism. In political philosophy, cosmopolitans reject the legitimacy and moral relevance of borders and the division of people into separate political communities (e.g., states). The moral equivalent would be to reject the notion that we owe more to family than friends, more to friends than strangers, more to countrymen than foreigners, etc. We could sum this up as belonging to a single moral and political community, but it certainly doesn't entail that we in fact have shared values and morals. It may not even entail that we should have shared values and morals.

I suspect "citizens of the world" of attempting to evade their local responsibilities — Bitter Crank

In the political philosophy literature, cosmopolitanism is used as a way of increasing our responsibilities, not decreasing or shifting them. In many ways, it is a response to the nationalist attempt to limit whom we are responsible to. And while utilitarians are cosmopolitans in theory, some (e.g., Singer) shift our responsibilities in practice. So non-utilitarian theories of cosmopolitanism could also be seen as pushing back against that sort of tendency (here I am thinking particularly of Charles Beitz, who argues for expanding the Rawlsian approach beyond the limits of individual states).

I'm not sure. — Michael

Well, your uncertainty notwithstanding, it's still a basic fact of logic.

Consider:

X ought be saved iff X can be saved.
X can be saved iff all Ys donate.
Therefore all Ys ought to donate. — Michael

This argument is invalid.

But if one Y doesn't donate then no other Y ought to donate because their donations cannot save X. So each Y's obligation to donate is dependent on every other Y donating. — Michael

I have already dealt with cases like this above. They are not counterexamples to the rule because they are not cases where it is simultaneously the case that all X ought to P and not the case that some X ought to P. Instead, they are cases where x₁ ought to P iff x₂–x_n actually P. At best, the obligation of x₁ in such cases is to show up prepared to donate (and to donate iff x₂–x_n show up).

(I have also suggested that the argument in the OP is best understood as not involving such contingent responsibilities.)

OK, maybe you don't realize that its unpleasant when someone implies that your posts rely on uncharitable interpretations and that it comes across condescending when you then post a link to the principle of charity. — shmik

I've been posting links to the principle of charity (as well as certain fallacies) the first time I mention it on a thread for ten years. It's a habit at this point, and this is the first complaint I've ever received about it. But if all this has been about me hurting your feelings, then I apologize. I never meant to do so.

To which you didn't reply. — shmik

Not directly. I chose to write up the entire argument in propositional calculus instead as that seemed the most direct way to prove my point that the argument is valid. My indirect reply can be seen in how I represented P6 in that rendition: A <=> H (where A = "some gratuitous suffering is preventable" and H = "it is possible to adopt a vegan diet"). The preventable gratuitous suffering referenced in my abbreviation is that caused by food production practices, so this gives us "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet."

Interesting that you frame the discussion like this considering my first and second posts state that there is an ambiguity, assume that interpretation (2) is the one that Soylent means and suggest a way to patch up the argument so that interpretation (2) works. — shmik

You seem to be confused. All I was saying with the point about charity is that the one interpretation is obviously not what was intended that there's no real threat to the argument's validity. The first interpretation is not relied on anywhere else in the argument, so there is no reason to read an equivocation into the argument.

It's true that in my conversation with you I have taken (1) as your interpretation but this is the most charitable interpretation (of your posts). — shmik

Then you are definitely confused because I haven't endorsed (1) or (2). Your argument only works if we are taking P6 to be "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so" (which is the original version of P6 with my suggestion about who is involved tacked on). But from the beginning, I have been suggesting an alternative P6 (along with an alternative P7 and P8): "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if it is possible to adopt a vegan diet." This alteration already incorporates the "anyone who is in a position to" suggestion in virtue of adding a modal term to the claim.

(I have also suggested that "contribution" should be interpreted broadly such that it involves more than a short-term decrease in the amount of suffering that exists. The one giving the argument could then claim that there is not one person for whom going vegan would have no effect. We might wonder about the truth of such a claim, but this thread is about the argument's validity.)

The way I have written it is unambiguous. — shmik

Then you seem to be contradicting yourself. Your original complaint was that the original version of P6 is ambiguous. You then claimed that P6 with the "anyone who is in a position to" clause tacked on is also ambiguous. But P6 with the "anyone who is in a position to" clause tacked on gets us "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so." If this is ambiguous—and your entire argument is based on the claim that it is—then "gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is adopted by anyone who can adopt it" is also ambiguous (as it is essentially the same claim).

There will always be the hard-line skeptics that will demand proof rather than accept a principle on an assumption. — Soylent

But I don't think one has to be a hard-line skeptic to deny the strong version (which is what I was responding to). There's a very soft kind of skepticism available here that says "the line is blurry, but it's not 10 miles wide." In fact, the strong version doesn't seem even remotely plausible. The weak version seems a lot more defensible. It significantly reduces the scope of the argument, but you seem to be fine with that.

This is precisely what the risk-averse assumption aims to overcome. — Soylent

I realize that, but I don't think that either version succeeds in doing so even if we accept it. What the risk-averse assumption tells us is that non-human animals are sentient. But even if sentience is a necessary condition for experiencing any form of suffering, it is not a sufficient condition for experiencing all forms of suffering. Sentience makes certain kinds of suffering possible, but other kinds of suffering require additional cognitive functions. Mere sentience, for instance, does not bring with it the ability to have long-term expectations or the risk of harm that comes from having such expectations dashed. So even if I were to accept that all non-human animals were sentient, it would not follow that they were all capable of suffering in the exact same way as humans. But if not everything that constitutes suffering in humans constitutes suffering in non-human animals, then the direct correspondence between human and non-human animal suffering has been broken. Therefore, we cannot assume that everything that constitutes gratuitous suffering in humans constitutes gratuitous suffering in non-human animals.

Furthermore, there seem to be clear counterexamples to the claim that everything that constitutes gratuitous suffering in humans constitutes gratuitous suffering in non-human animals. Here's a stupid one: watching someone being tortured. Not all non-human animals have the empathic capacity for this to cause suffering. But most humans do. Therefore, watching someone being tortured would constitute suffering in humans, but it would not constitute suffering (and thus could not constitute gratuitous suffering) in certain non-human animals. Here's a less stupid example: miscarriage. Not all non-human animals have the capacity to understand what pregnancy is or to have hopes and expectations about child rearing. But a human can learn about pregnancy, get pregnant on purpose, prepare their home for a child, and dream about their own future as a parent and the child's future as it grows into an adult. A human can also experience incredible heartbreak at the loss of a pregnancy and the subsequent loss of those hopes and expectations. Humans can even experience this sense of loss if they find out that they weren't actually pregnant—or that they are not capable of becoming pregnant.

So not only can we not assume that everything that constitutes gratuitous suffering in humans constitutes gratuitous suffering in non-human animals, we have good reason to reject it. But I also worry that your own examples might not work even if we accept the principle. For example, you mentioned egg harvesting. Yet it is not clear to me that sifting through the menstrual discharge of human women and extracting unfertilized eggs from it would cause them gratuitous suffering. Yet this is precisely what we are doing when we collect chicken eggs for food. So long as the chickens are given proper food, proper amounts of space, and anything else necessary for a decent life, it's unclear why harvesting unfertilized eggs discharged through a natural process constitutes any sort of harm at all.

We have obligations to prevent gratuitous suffering in a limited sense, if the prevention requires only that we abstain from actions that cause gratuitous suffering and not perform actions that alleviate or eliminate gratuitous suffering. — Soylent

This seems implausible, especially once the reasonable cost condition is in place (which I agree is helpful, particularly against the specific case I brought up previously). If gratuitous suffering is such a problem, and if it costs me very little to perform some action that would alleviate, eliminate, or reduce some gratuitous suffering, why am I not obligated to do so?

One might choose to inflict or risk gratuitous suffering on oneself (e.g., elective surgeries), if the prevention is considered to be an unreasonable cost (e.g., further harm, either psychological or physical). — Soylent

Is this the only condition on which we can inflict or risk gratuitous suffering on ourselves? And if so, I wonder how wide a gap this creates. Is freedom too high a cost to pay for not being able to get elective surgeries? Let's say we were trying to convince someone to wait until they were 21 to get a full body tattoo despite 18 being the age at which people are generally considered adults (and thus capable of making their own decisions on matters like these). Tattooing isn't exactly pleasant, particularly a full body tattoo. This is a known risk of getting a tattoo (so there's some known suffering involved). Not getting the tattoo spares them from a certain amount of physical harm for a short period of time (so the known suffering is preventable), and the psychological harm is arguably minimal given the fact that they only have to wait three extra years to get the tattoo (so the cost to prevent the harm is reasonable). Should the 18-year-old wait? Is it obligatory that they do so? Should they wait longer?

No, it seems to be your excessive focus on 'being right' that leads to you assume (again, and incorrectly) that my ego is bruised. — John

If I were focused on "being right," I wouldn't be admitting that my argumentative resources had run out on the issue. Instead, I'd be trying to bring new ones to bear. I do find it interesting, however, that you seem perfectly comfortable denying that I can infer anything about your attitudes from what you've written while simultaneously attempting to do the same based on what I've written (particularly given how many times you have misinterpreted my posts so far). Curious.

My point from the beginning has not been that philosophy has, or can have, no practical applications, just that whatever applications it may be argued to have are not as obvious and unarguable as the applications of science to technology. — John

I have already acknowledged this. I will do it again now for what I think is the fourth time. But I deny that philosophy has no obvious applications, and I will also deny your new claim that the applications of science are unarguable. Leaving aside the "pedantic" point that everything is arguable, I think anything that can be said against the obviousness or unarguability of the applications of philosophy (and I will take this opportunity that I have only claimed that the applications of philosophy are—or at least ought to be—obvious and not that they are unarguable) can be said just as well against the obviousness or unarguability of the applications of science.

For examples, the application of QM to electronics, Relativity Theory to GPS, microbiology to genetic engineering of crops, and so on; I mean, the possible list of direct and obvious applications of science is no doubt huge. — John

These are clearly applications of science to technology. Are they obvious? I doubt that the average person realizes how QM has affected electronics, how relativity has affected GPS, and so on. So common knowledge must not be the measure of obviousness. This rather supports my contention that one might need to know quite a bit about philosophy to understand the "obviousness" of its applications. Thus I would return to my example of democracy, which would not and could not exist in the form it does today without philosophy.

I don't know why you think that a posited pre-scientific existence of technology, even if true, (and I think that whether you counted it as true would depend on your definitions of the terms 'science' and 'technology') would qualify as an argument against obvious practical applications of science. — John

I don't. I think it narrows the range of objections you can use against the claim that philosophy also has obvious implications. It's a fairly straightforward strategy: every time you make a claim against philosophy, I point out that the same point can be made against science; and every time you try to limit what sort of philosophy counts for the purposes of our discussion, I make sure that the same limitation applies to what we are counting as science.

I would agree that any improvement of general thinking ability attributable to philosophy could count as a general contribution to human practical abilities, but not as a direct and obvious practical application. — John

I see that you are once again moving the goalposts. "Direct" is yet another new addition to the claim you are trying to defend. I hereby reject this moving of the goalposts and insist on sticking to the original claim: that philosophy does not have obvious applications in a way that science does. As such, is your objection to the conjunction "direct and obvious" based on directness, obviousness, or both? If it is only based on directness, then we have entered into a different conversation.

This difference in our ways of thinking about this may be simply due to our different interpretations of the term 'practical'. I also don't count 'living well', which is a term subject to an enormous range of different interpretations, as being a term that denotes a purely or obviously practical matter. — John

In which case you are misusing the terms. You might as well go to a physics forum and insist that relativity is false only to reveal several posts later that you meant moral relativism. Because on a philosophy forum, saying that "living well" does not count as a practical matter is nearly as bad as talking about colorless green ideas sleeping furiously. (Please note that I said "nearly.")

If I may interject, I believe Russell held this position regarding his own profession of philosophy. — darthbarracuda

If you and Russell agree with me in thinking this, then so much the worse for you, for it would seem that according to PB's position, this would show that you and Russell are both not sufficiently "familiar with the discipline." — John

More misreading, I see. As darthbaraccuda explicitly noted, Russell was talking about the profession. I am not. Moreover, Russell's claim that we ought to seek knowledge for its own sake regardless of whether it has any practical applications is clearly consistent with the claim that it in fact has such applications (and even with the claim that such applications are obvious). Nor is my claim limited to community benefits. Russell recognizes a benefit to the individual that would fit quite well into the category of living well.

I don't have to assume what your comments reveal. And in any case, my point about becoming more familiar with the discipline was just a repetition of what I had said earlier—namely, that it is the only response left when this sort of impasse arises. It's not an insult, but rather an admission that there's nothing else to say. But I see you have again chosen to focus on the parts of my response that bruised your ego rather than the substance. Given that, perhaps I should accept your own admission that you are not capable of responding fruitfully. So be it.

On the actual topic of this discussion, Simon Blackburn recently published an essay on the value of studying philosophy. In it, he makes some comments about progress in philosophy—and about the sort of progress that philosophy can be expected to make:

Do the practices of philosophy change, and do they improve? One of the most potent causes of mistrust of philosophy is that it provides no answers, only questions, so that to many it does not seem to have progressed since its very beginnings in Plato, or even in pre-Socratic Greece (or China or India). Of course, one might similarly ask whether other human pursuits, such as music, literature, drama, architecture, painting or politics, have 'improved' (and by what measure this judgement is supposed to be made), and if the answer is at best indeterminate we might query whether this reflects badly on those practices, or whether perhaps it indicates a problem with the question. It may be enough that their practitioners improve as they get their musical, literary and other educations, and that, having improved, they can help to keep some of humanity’s most important flames alive.

Nevertheless there is another answer, which is that philosophy has indeed both changed and improved. It has always changed, because the social and historical matrix in which it is practised changes, and it is that matrix that throws up the questions that seem most urgent at particular times. And it has improved first because there is a constant input of improved scientific knowledge that feeds it, and second because sometimes improved moral and political sensibilities filter into it. An example of the latter is the way that the improving status of women, and their increased representation in the philosophy classroom, has both thrown up new and interesting issues and generally altered for the better the way discussions are conducted. Examples of the former influence are legion: from Copernicus through Newton to Darwin, Einstein and today’s neurophysiologists, philosophers have absorbed and then tried to interpret advances in scientific knowledge. Nineteenth-century advances in mathematics helped to propel logic to its enormous 20th-century leaps forward (and that in turn helped the computer age to get started). In recent years, there has been much valuable collaboration between philosophy and learning theory, neurophysiology, economics and cognitive science. — Simon Blackburn

And, of course, there is always the possibility that philosophers have made great progress without it being recognized as such. But I suppose that's more of an epistemological question.

I must say that I am still not convinced that I should think that philosophy, either for those doing it or for society in general, has the kind of obvious practical applications that science does. — John

Well, of course you're not. At this point, you are too invested in saying that there aren't any to suddenly see them. And as I've already noted, there's no argument that can be given. All I can tell you to do is to better familiarize yourself with the discipline. That's the only way you'll come to understand.

(But since you seem to think an argument ought to be forthcoming, I wonder what your argument is for the claim that science has any obvious practical applications. We've had technology longer than we've had formal science, after all, so it can't just be that.)

If you are taking 'doing philosophy' or the 'existence of philosophy' to refer to the fact that people obviously think about what they do, then I would say that it is trivially true that it has practical applications, but I also think that such a definition of philosophy would be too broad. — John

That's not what I've said, though. I do think that we ought to define "philosophy" broadly (after all, academic philosophy grows out of a less formal type of philosophical thinking), but I would not define it so broadly as to refer to any thinking we do about things. Regardless, the main point can be made even if we limit ourselves to formal philosophical thinking: we are all stuck making decisions of the sort with which ethics is concerned, so it is obviously to our advantage if we can think well about these decisions rather than thinking poorly about them; but philosophy is fundamentally about improving the way we think, and ethics is fundamentally about improving the way we think about a particular set of questions; therefore, philosophy (and thinking philosophically) can help us make these decisions.

Thanks for letting us know, hyena. It's good to hear from you, though I'm sorry that this was the occasion for it. I hope all is well with you and yours.

I can't make sense of this. — Michael

Let's take a simpler example. Suppose that agent subjectivism is true: statements of the form "x is permissible/obligatory/wrong" mean something like "I approve of/demand/disapprove of x." Just because language developed this way doesn't mean that there are not actual moral facts of which we are ignorant, however. And if we discovered them, we would need to either come up with new words to talk about them or reappropriate our moral language for them. As we have other ways of expressing approval, demands, and disapproval, and as one might think that the new discourse ought to replace the old discourse, it is not entirely bizarre to think the second option (the revisionary one) might be advocated by some.

This happens in other disciplines, as well. Sometimes we take the first option and abandon the old discourse (this is what happened when we abandoned phlogiston discourse in favor of oxygen discourse). Other times we take the second option and reappropriate the old discourse while revising what the terms mean (this is what happened when non-Euclidean geometers decided to redefine the necessary and sufficient conditions for being parallel within their discourse; Kant and Einstein can also be seen as having done this with Newton's notions of time and space, albeit in rather different ways).

I'm certainly not endorsing the combination. But it doesn't make sense to ignore it as a possibility.

Furthermore, to suggest that an explanation of the meaning of "X is immoral" can differ from an explanation of what it means to be immoral seems comparable to suggesting that an explanation of the meaning of "X is a bachelor" can differ from an explanation of what it means to be a bachelor — Michael

You are bewitching yourself with language here (and mistaking the project of metaethics at the same time). One task of metaethics is to explain the meaning of "X is immoral." It is not a task of metaethics to explain what it means to be immoral, however, unless we are using the latter expression to stand in for something more complicated that does not present the same surface difficulties (such as the alternative usage of "mean" in the second expression"). Metaethics is about the meaning of moral expressions, about whether or not a certain type of fact exists, and about the relationship between the facts and our expressions. But there is no presupposition in the subject itself that the expressions must line up with the facts in one of only two ways.

I'm not sure how this runs contrary to what I've said. — Michael

Again, it doesn't. What I am suggesting is that you are hunting snipe. For any two views that are not mutually exclusive, no one says you can't hold them both at the same time. And for any views that are mutually exclusive, it would be a mistake for you to argue that they can be held at the same time. And of course, it has long been recognized that different views might be appropriate for different discourses (or contexts of discourse). In short, I don't see you as having any real targets in your sights.

I'd be interested in which professional moral philosophers have argued in favour of multiple meta-ethical approaches to explain morality and moral language. — Michael

Sure. Let's start with David Hume. He is a non-cognitivist about the origins of morality (this is his sentimentalism, which says that morality is more properly felt than judged and that the origin of morality is in the passions). Nevertheless, he is a constructivist about moral practice (our moral sentiments influence us to adopt various personal and interpersonal moral practices, with varying degrees of compliance). He is also a moral naturalist of sorts (what we count as virtuous and vicious relates directly back to our nature, though our circumstances also play an important role and nature is not the external imposition that Aristotle would have it be). Furthermore, he is a cognitivist about moral language (though morality begins in the sentiments, our primary use of moral statements has come to be the expression of propositions). He is then an error theorist insofar as he thinks those statements have come to be reinterpreted as presupposing the existence of facts that go beyond what is actually the case (so the majority of moral practices are justifiable, but the common justification is mistaken—complete with a few mistaken practices as a result). While he is both a constructivist and an error theorist, he does not adopt them both in relation to any single discourse or praxis (thus he is not violating the "no two at once" rule). Similarly, he is both a cognitivist and a non-cognitivist, but about different things (the origins of morality and moral expressions). He may also be open to the possibility that not all moral expressions are cognitive (as are nearly all cognitivists; it is the non-cognitivists about moral language who are more likely to take a universal approach here—though they need not).

John Mackie is famously an error theorist and a utilitarian. He believes that our actual moral language presupposes moral realism and that objective moral facts do not exist. He is a cognitivist about moral language, however, and so he adopts error theory: ordinary moral language expresses truth-apt sentences, and they all turn out to be false (because they either presuppose or attempt to make reference to facts that do not exist). But he also takes morality to be an indispensable feature of everyday life, so we need to invent and agree to some sort of moral edifice to fill the role that objective moral facts were supposed to fill. With no objective moral facts, the most agreeable candidate to build this edifice on is utility. Thus it makes sense to adopt a form of utilitarianism in both our private and public lives (which is a sort of revolutionary constructivism). Obviously, I am cutting the argument dreadfully short here. I just want to show how he combines various views.

Richard Joyce, meanwhile, is an error theorist and a revolutionary fictionalist. He is a cognitivist about moral expressions, and he takes those expressions to presuppose facts that do not exist (thus they are not true—note that Joyce says they are "not true" rather than "false" because he is a Strawsonian about presupposition, whereas Mackie is a Russellian). Accepting the semantic thesis while rejecting the metaphysical and alethic theses makes him an error theorist about moral discourse. Like Mackie, however, he thinks that moral discourse is too important to simply discard. His recommended solution, then, is that we treat it as a fiction: moral facts don't really exist, but let us act as if they do in order to retain the benefits of having a moral edifice (one that is easier to modify so long as we keep in the back of our minds the fact that it is ultimately a fiction).

So that's three examples. Obviously, I picked from a closely related set of views as they are, in my opinion, some of the better and easier to understand examples. Raimond Gaita has a complete mess of an attempt to bring various threads together (both metaethical and normative) in his Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, but the book does not lend itself to summary. Sharon Street is another great example, in part because she is a more sophisticated Humean (though in Hume's defense, she has the advantage of being able to draw on nearly two and a half more centuries worth of reflection and observation). Her work is excellent, however. I would highly recommend it.

They make claims about what it means for X to be immoral, which is to make a claim about what "X is immoral" means. — Michael

I think it is a mistake to tie these questions so closely together. It is completely possible to think both that there are real moral facts, but that our moral language does not concern itself with them. That is, one could be a non-cognitivist about actual moral language while nevertheless thinking that there are moral facts that we ought to be thinking and talking about.

I wouldn't say that this is exactly correct. Realism and nihilism are mutually exclusive, as realism argues that some X is inherently immoral whereas nihilism argues that no X is inherently immoral, but nihilism and relativism are not mutually exclusive as the claims "X is not inherently immoral" and "X is non-inherently immoral" are compatible. — Michael

But the views are defined more precisely than this. Robust moral realism is the conjunction of three claims:

• The semantic thesis: Moral assertions are truth-apt.
• The alethic thesis: Some such assertions are true.
• The metaphysical thesis: Those such assertions that are true are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion.

Constructivists—including the sort of relativist I take it you mean to be discussing—deny the metaphysical thesis. Nihilists deny both the metaphysical and alethic theses (with error theorists accepting the semantic thesis and non-cognitive nihilists denying it). This can then be further complicated by whether one is a fictionalist about (certain parts of) ethics and what sort of fictionalist one might be (a hermeneutical fictionalist or a revolutionary fictionalist). One can also be a non-cognitivist about the origins of morality (aka "sentimentalism") while nevertheless being a cognitivist about moral language. One can also be an error theorist about some discourses while not being an error theorist about other discourses. And of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Leaving aside the fact that this seems to contradict your immediately prior claim that "you can't be any two at once" — Michael

There is no contradiction. Just because one cannot be both a realist and a nihilist doesn't mean that one cannot be both a nihilist and, say, a non-cognitivist (the cognitivism/non-cognitivism debate also being a metaethical one). Indeed, one can be both a nihilist and a non-cognitivist (as most non-cognitivists are). And as I already alluded to, one could have a view on which one was a hermeneutical non-cognitivist (our moral language does not involve making truth-apt assertions) and a revolutionary realist (there are moral facts, and so our moral language ought to be revised so as to be about them). Again, these are just two possible examples.

I'm not saying that these views rule each other out. I'm actually saying the opposite; that they're compatible — Michael

And my point is that no one has ever said that adopting any single metaethical view thereby rules out all other metaethical views (just the ones that are inconsistent with the one already adopted). That's why I said "I don't understand the criticism" rather than "I think your claim is mistaken."

People do indeed try to argue for just a single meta-ethical view and claim that this meta-ethical view successfully makes sense of (all) moral claims. — Michael

Please cite a professional moral philosopher who does this and where they do it. Even a robust realist—who must address multiple issues in defending his view—nevertheless does not cover all aspects of metaethics simply in virtue of being a realist.

The usual approach to meta-ethics is to argue for a single understanding: realism or nihilism or relativism, and so on. This is far too simplistic and fails to consider the complexity of moral language. — Michael

I don't understand the criticism. For one, realism, nihilism, and relativism aren't theses about moral language. Realism is constituted in part by a claim about moral language, and relativism may be depending on which of the several ways that term is used you are intending to pick out here, but these views are primarily about the metaphysics of ethics. For another, people argue realism or nihilism or relativism because the way these are defined (again, depending on what you mean by relativism), they are all mutually exclusive. You can't be any two at once, so of course the decision is treated as exclusive. Third, adopting one of these views does not rule out having other metaethical views as well. So it is odd to think that adopting one of these views is simplistic on the grounds that they do not cover the full complexity of moral language. They aren't even supposed to do that. It's like complaining about the electrician because he didn't fix your sink.

There are 2 interpretations. — shmik

But when there are two interpretations and one of them has no problems, you assume the one with no problems is the one that was intended. It's called the principle of charity.

Also, I don't think you have formulated the first option correctly. What you've written is the ambiguous formulation itself. Your (1) should be: "Gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable if and only if a vegan diet is simultaneously adopted by everyone who can adopt it." But of course, it is obvious that this is not what the argument intends to assert once this interpretation is made explicit. So while I can agree that this interpretation would cause problems, I don't see any reason to read it into the argument.

I agree that some follows from all generally. — shmik

Great. But in fact, "some" always follows from "all." To say that something is true of all members of a set is to say that it is true of each member. Therefore, it must be true of some members of the set (which is to say that it must be true of at least one member of the set).

I then reply, 'Brian you ought to go to the park and all your friends ought to go with you'. — shmik

And if you said this, you'd be wrong. Brian ought to go to the park (if and) only if 21 of his other friends are going and they are willing to play soccer (with him). What you might suggest to Brian, then, is that he bring 21 friends with him to the park. Furthermore, this is not the same move if my previous point (that the short term impact on a local supermarket is not the proper measure of whether someone is in a position to reduce the gratuitous suffering of food animals) is correct.

But again, the purpose of this discussion is to investigate the validity of the argument, not the truth of any given premise. Here is the current version of the argument in propositional calculus:

Let:
A = some gratuitous suffering is preventable
B = some gratuitous suffering is known
C = it is wrong for someone in a position to prevent gratuitous suffering to allow it
D = some nonhuman animals are sentient
E = food production practices would constitute gratuitous suffering in humans
G = food production practices constitute gratuitous suffering in non-human animals
H = it is possible to adopt a vegan diet
I = a vegan diet ought to be adopted by all who are in a position to adopt it

Argument:
P1. (A & B) --> C
P2. (D & E) --> G
P3. D
P4. E
C1. G
P5. G --> B
C2. B
P6. A <=> H
P7. H --> A
P8. H
C3. A
C4. C
P9. (C & (A <=> H)) --> I
C5. I

As far as I can tell, this is a valid argument. Therefore, it seems to me your objections must be about the truth of the premises (which is a subject for the other discussion). I agree that P6 is false. I just disagree that its falsity has anything to do with whether or not the argument is valid.

Which is my point, it depends on the subject. — shmik

Whether there is a direct link depends on the subject. But you have yet to show why a direct link matters to the validity of the argument.

I disagree that this follows from the premises. — shmik

It's unclear what you think doesn't follow. The point I was making was very simple: "some" follows from "all." So if the argument succeeds in getting "anyone who is in a position to adopt veganism ought to do so," it can get "S, an individual who is in a position to adopt veganism, ought to do so" as well. It's the same way that you don't get to murder someone just because you live in a place where someone else will do it if you don't.

I think it very much does matter what whether or not other people adopt a vegan diet. — shmik

But that's going to depend on the nature of the wrong. I mentioned before that the argument could be rewritten depending on whether one is addressing deontologists or consequentialists. For instance, P1 could just as easily be "If any gratuitous suffering is preventable and known, it is wrong to participate in said gratuitous suffering" (and mutatis mutandis throughout).

Even on the consequentialist reading, though, I don't think one gets to opt out just because one's effect is minimal. At best, you have shown only that vegans have duties beyond merely abstaining from the use of animal products. They might have to write to their grocer, discuss the issue with other people, and so forth. But it seems a mistake to judge the impact of an individual person's abstinence solely in terms of the short term effect on a local supermarket's bottom line. If consequentialists only looked at the short term, they'd never go to the dentist either. But that's clearly a straw man version of consequentialism.

We are claiming in 6 that if every element of the set of people who can go vegan, do go vegan, then we will achieve a desired outcome. This speaks about one specific situation and says nothing about the outcome of any other distribution of veganism within the set. Effectively we have a statement like: if X&Y&Z then T. Nothing is said about X&Y&~Z. — shmik

Sure. But the biconditional is not the end of the story. It's a premise, and all that matters for the topic of this conversation is whether or not it does its job as a premise. Strictly speaking, worrying about whether or not it is true is a topic for the associated discussion. Nor does it matter that nothing is said about (X & Y & ¬Z). The point of P6 is just to be part of the antecedent in P9 (and, originally, to get us P7).

So with P9 and C5 all we can say is that the set of people who can go vegan should go vegan (as a set). The argument can almost never claim that any individual should go vegan. — shmik

But again, "some" follows from "all." If all x ought to P, then x1 ought to P.

There is no direct link between the person who eats the animal and the treatment of the animal. — shmik

That depends on the person. Not everyone gets their food from a supermarket or a restaurant.

It could well be that my going vegan does not have any effect on the animals that are farmed, chances are my super market is not going to order less meat because I am no longer buying from them. — shmik

But the choice is not between reading P6 as meaning "by everyone" or "just by one person." If the reading is "by anyone who is in a position to," as I suggested, that is going to be a very large number of people. So the fact that you cannot change your local supermarket's buying patterns alone is irrelevant. And if it were true that a vegan diet ought to be adopted by anyone who is in a position to do so, then it wouldn't matter whether or not other people will in fact do so. All that would matter is whether or not any given individual was in a position to adopt a vegan diet.

(The argument could also be rearranged to be more explicitly about participating in the production of gratuitous suffering. But that would get us into issues of deontology vs. consequentialism.)

The semantic distinction is this: veganism can be defined as the practice of not using sentient animals in our food production. — Soylent

I suppose. You would need to specify that you are intending this as a stipulative definition, however, or else you're going to get objections from "standard" vegans (who eschew all animal products, including non-food animal products). You might also need to head off objections that your argument should apply to non-food products like leather jackets (unless you in fact want to extend the argument beyond food products).

But the risk-averse assumption would say we are poor at discerning sentience in other animals, so for risk-aversion, we can assume all animals used in food production are sentient. I would say the knowledge of some is sufficient to error on the side of caution with all. — Soylent

If the risk-averse assumption goes through, then we might not need the semantic distinction. You could argue that veganism (standard definition) is entailed by the main argument (which covers all sentient animals) plus the risk-averse assumption (which extends the argument to all animals, just as the "standard" vegan wants).

However, I do not think that the risk-averse assumption goes through. Even if the border between sentient and non-sentient animals is blurry, it does not follow that we cannot rule out certain species. Dogs, cats, cows, and dolphins are all sentient. Lobsters? I don't know. But there are all sorts of insects that I am quite confident do not have sentience in the relevant sense, and I have no reason to think that I'm just bad at discerning their sentience (not least because my confidence is based on the fact that they lack the requisite physiological structures).

This rebuttal is addressed by P2 wherein the measure of gratuitous suffering is whether it would be considered gratuitous in humans. — Soylent

The trouble here is that humans have different capacities for suffering than animals. So it does not easily follow that an act which would cause gratuitous suffering in humans would also cause gratuitous suffering in non-human animals. Not all animals get attached to particular toys, for instance. Yet a young child may be terribly upset if you take away a toy and replace it with a different one (even a newer version of the old one).

Definition: If suffering is known and preventable, then said suffering is gratuitous (i.e., unjustified and wrong). — Soylent

You're going to need at least one more clause here. When my father goes to the dentist for a root canal, it is known that he will suffer from it. That particular suffering is also preventable (he could opt out of the root canal). Yet we do not consider the suffering gratuitous. One reason is that we take it to be known that the root canal will prevent even worse suffering.

You might think your existing premises already cover that case (if the known and preventable suffering from the root canal is less than the known and preventable suffering of the dental problem, then the latter negates the putative gratuitousness of the former). But what about elective surgeries? Or how about dangerous hobbies? Is the suffering these things bring justified by the pleasure we hope to receive from them or by our choosing them?

I also worry that the plausibility of the premise rests on the general assumption that gratuitous suffering is excessive in some way (whether quantitatively or qualitatively). If one allows a chicken to live a decent life (for a chicken) and then kills it as quickly and humanely as possible, there is very little loss associated with the chicken's death (not least because of its limited capacity to formulate desires). Principles that ask us to minimize suffering without eliminating it (which, as @BitterCrank notes, is impossible) always have problems with figuring out what counts as minimizing—particularly if we have to balance it with whatever suffering humans are made to endure by not having access to certain food items.

I said C3 follows from P6, P7, and P8 because P7 is an elimination of the biconditional. The biconditional adds a robustness in the ought claim, if it can be maintained with a defense of the soundness. — Soylent

Sure. But the standard way of writing that would be to identify P7 as following from P6 (which would make P7 C3), and then C3 (which would now be C4) would be listed as following from P7/C3 and P8. Right now, you have P7 listed as if it is just another assumed premise. It's just a minor technicality. And since it turns out you don't need the original P7, it doesn't end up causing any real problems.

This is a simplified version — Soylent

Fair enough!

Right. I was being a trigger happy, argumentative ass. — darthbarracuda

No problem. I was being a hypercorrective ass. ;)

Adopted by whom? — shmik

By anyone who is in a position to, I would think. There are two ways to go about this: rewording the argument to make it explicitly apply only to those who are in a position to adopt a vegan diet, or to leave it as is and accept that it is only applicable to those who are in a position to adopt a vegan diet. Moreover, I do not think that "adopted by all" is the natural reading here in part because the elimination of all suffering cannot possibly be the goal here. In fact, considering this might lead us to think that the "by those who are in a position to" condition is already built into the argument: it may not count as known and preventable gratuitous suffering if one is not in a position to avoid inflicting it.

@MIchael @darthbarracuda From the OP: "If there is an interest to discuss the soundness of the premises, I can create a spinoff thread elsewhere."

The first thing to note is that C3 does not actually use P6 (also, your current P7 isn't completely independent since it follows from P6). That's good news because it means you don't have to worry about it when wording P7 and P8. Therefore, you can change them to:

P7 If it is possible to adopt and maintain a vegan diet, then gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable
P8 It is possible to adopt and maintain a vegan diet.

And these two together get you C3.

Essentially, C3 says that the gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable, while P6 says that veganism is the only way to prevent the gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices.

(P.S. If you are trying to patch up this argument, you're going to have to address the slide from "some non-human animals" to "all non-human animals" that is implicit in adopting veganism. Also, are you interested in shorter and/or simplified versions of the argument?)

Give me an example of an "obvious practical application" of ethics. — John

Ethics is about how to live (with some people focusing more on what makes a life good, others focusing on what counts as living rightly, and still others focusing on fitting the two concerns together). Everyone makes decisions about how they should live—even those who conclude that they should stop living, or that they should live selfishly, or that they should not let the ethical principles of others interfere with their decision making—so everyone does ethics (though many do it sloppily and/or badly). When someone decides that they ought to live a particular way (or that they ought not to live some particular way), they imply some sort of ethical commitment and base their decision on some sort of ethical principle (even if that principle is vague or nihilistic, since ethics is not any particular conclusion). So I would say (as I have before) that ethics itself is an example (when properly understood). We do ethics not just when thinking about ethical issues, after all, but when making ethical decisions. Ethics, like philosophy itself, is as much an activity as it is an area of inquiry. And the inquiry is of great practical benefit when applied to the activity.

But if you want a more specific example, I have again given one already: living well. This goes beyond just making individual decisions about how one should live (which may be made moment to moment, invoking different principles each time), but trying to make one's life cohere into something worth living (and not just minimally worth living, but as maximally worthwhile as we can manage). Perhaps not everyone actually engages in an attempt to live well, but it ought to be clear why it is in everyone's interest to do so. So while not everyone in fact applies ethics in this way (just as not everyone avails themselves of the applications of science), it is nevertheless an available application—and an obvious one, I would say. I realize that you consider this to be too broad to count as practical, but notice that living well is ultimately a combination of many specific decisions. Even decisions about what career to pursue can have significant effects on one's eudaimonia in terms of one's relationship with both the good and the right. And note that this connection has also long been recognized by ethical traditions outside of the West. Buddhist ethics, for instance, makes choosing the right career one of the primary concerns described by the Eightfold Path.

These examples should suffice. But if one construes ethics broadly so as to include both moral and political philosophy, then I have already given at least one more: democracy (which has been developed over the long course of time by philosophers both within and without the Western philosophical tradition). Particularly as instituted today, our political system has been profoundly influenced by philosophy (both in terms of the general structure and specific policy issues, though I do not take the connections between philosophy and specific policies to be obvious). Philosophy has also been important in creating the conditions for democracy to take hold, such as in the early modern period when a sustained critique of the divine right of kings and the concurrent refinement of social contract theory led to a significant change in popular notions of political legitimacy. If we do not want to construe ethics broadly and instead wish to treat political philosophy as a separate area, then we can leave that as an obvious practical application of philosophy (and specifically political philosophy, but not ethics).

Indeed, ethics is the part of philosophy that everyone rushes to point to when asking for an application of philosophy, and we rush to it because its applications are so apparent. Not everyone realizes that ethicists are concerned with such a broad array of issues. Ethical philosophy is often presented to beginners as if it were just deontologists and consequentialists hashing out the metaphysics of ethics despite agreeing in the vast majority of cases regarding what specific actions were right. If that is one's familiarity with the subject, then one can be forgiven for misunderstanding the scope of the discipline. But when one gets to know the range of ethical concerns, the applications of ethics to life should be much clearer.

Just look at the number of posts in Metaphysics and Epistemology compared to Ethics on your typical philosophy forum to get an indication of what exercises the average amateur philosophical interest. — John

First, that depends on which forum one visits. There are plenty that cater to audiences more interested in ethics, and there are even independent forums dedicated to moral and political philosophy. Looking at TPF and PF, both have a greater number of posts in M&E—but both sites also have a greater number of topics (aka "threads," aka "discussions") in ethics. In any case, it doesn't make sense to ground pronouncements about the whole of philosophy on the activity of amateurs alone (nor on the activity of academics alone, for that matter).

In any case, apart from ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, we have aesthetics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, semantics, semiology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and so on. — John

Indeed we do, but this seems irrelevant. Your claim involved a direct comparison between ethics on the one hand and metaphysics and epistemology on the other. Every area of philosophy is small compared to the whole, particularly the finer we cut it up. But that says nothing about the relative sizes of any two areas of philosophy, nor to the question of whether there are any practical applications of philosophy (since a universal generalization is disproved just as well by one counterexample as it is by a thousand).

This is nonsense; one can just as well practice the scientific method without ever having given any thought to epistemology. — John

Whether or not one has to give epistemology a thought has nothing to do with whether or not one is applying it or its products. As my claim was only that the scientific method is an application of epistemology, it matters not at all that some people do not realize what they are doing when they use the scientific method—just as modern computer engineers do not have to understand how their science came about in order to apply its results, and I do not have to understand computer engineering to occasionally make use of various markup language tags (technology, of course, being your own example).

As to the historical relationship between epistemology and scientific practice it is arguable that the latter is prior to what is merely thinking about the implications of what we already do. — John

Not really. Aristotle's early version of the method started with reflections on common practice (as did all of his ideas), but it was also the product of a conscious effort to standardize and improve upon those methods. Alhazen relied heavily on Aristotle, but found it necessary to diverge from the received methods (leading him to develop the foundations of experimental methodology). And the Baconian method—which is generally seen as the beginning of the modern scientific method, particularly when synthesized with the efforts of his contemporaries Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler—was a conscious effort to replace Aristotelianism. Later refinements by Descartes and Mill were also concerted philosophical efforts aimed at expanding and improving current practices rather than just describing and reflecting on them, as were the important contributions of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Then, of course, there are the well-known efforts of Karl Popper to overcome the problem of induction by reframing science in terms of falsifiability. All of these were conscious philosophical attempts to ground science on sound epistemological principles.

This is funny! Rather than offer a cogent argument for why I should agree with you, you suggest that anyone that doesn't agree with you could not be counted as a "competent thinker"! — John

No. I replied to your word games with a qualification of my meaning. And if you read carefully, you'll notice that what I said offers multiple possible explanations for your failure to recognize my examples. You've just chosen to focus on a particular one.

In any case, your request for an argument is confused. One cannot prove obviousness. One can only point to examples and expect others to see the obviousness. If they do not, there really isn't much to say. I could just as easily dig in my heels and refuse to acknowledge that science has any obvious practical applications. And if I did so, you would not be able to offer any sort of proof. All you'd be able to do is offer examples of your own and tell me to educate myself if I did not understand them (as a lack of familiarity is often the problem here). It is generally taken as obvious that 1 + 1 = 2, for instance, but try getting a one-year-old child to see that. A certain level of familiarity with the subject matter is required before one can see even such "obvious" facts as this, after all.

This leaves us with a question about treating obviousness as any sort of interesting or relevant measure. You say philosophy has no obvious practical applications. I say it has several (and of course, I only need one to disprove the generalization). So my question now is why you think it matters. It clearly matters to you, and so I have endeavored to offer you examples. Ultimately, however, I wonder what you think turns on the issue.

And so now, ethics itself is the practical application, rather than being a discipline of thought which merely may have practical applications? — John

Ethics was one of my original examples, so I'm not sure why you are treating it here as a new suggestion. In any case, ethics is both a discipline of thought and a practice informed by that discipline of thought. I have already discussed this above, but here is yet another example. Devoutly religious people often act without needing to think very much about what to do. This is because they are influenced by the ethical thinkers of their faith's past and the systems of ethical practice those thinkers left behind. They are influenced in this way regardless of whether they have thought deeply about these issues themselves or not. This is still an application of that thought, however. Indeed, inherited ethical systems are another obvious practical application of ethics—for better or worse—and thus of philosophy.

As I understood it, the argument was over whether doing philosophy is very obviously helpful when it comes to practical matters; that is, over whether philosophical thought leads directly (very obviously) to very clear practical applications. — John

Then you have misunderstood. The question under discussion is whether philosophy has any practical applications. This is confirmed by the wording found in both of our posts at the outset of this disagreement, during which we both spoke in terms of philosophy itself and neither of us spoke in terms of doing philosophy. When it comes to doing philosophy, a lot depends on the philosopher. Plenty of people philosophize without ever applying it to their life. Others think hard about the connection between what they think and what they do. As such, I would not say that doing philosophy obviously will be helpful when it comes to practical matters (even if it can be helpful). The same is true of science, however. I know academic physicists who can hardly walk straight despite voluminous knowledge about mechanics (both classical and quantum).

Again, nonsense, as I see it. — John

How interesting that you think the way something strikes me means little, but I am expected to find it relevant how something is as you see it. In any case, you again seem to be unaware of what the words you are using mean. Particularly in a philosophical context, the theoretical is indeed contrasted with the practical. But this is not merely a linguistic convention of philosophers. The phrase "it works in theory, but not in practice" is commonplace in English (enough so for the reverse—"it works in practice, but not in theory"—to be a frequent joke in fields where techniques have far outpaced explanations).

Theorizing is "opposed" to doing. But much of 'doing' is not practical in the sense of "practical application". For example, things that are done for fun are not normally thought to be done for practical purposes. — John

But even if we were to accept this, the example of living well would still stand. And in any case, living well is a quintessentially practical enterprise given how that word is used in philosophy (that being the relevant sense of the word in a philosophical discussion on a philosophy forum).

All I intended to convey was the fact that the measure of farming well, leaving aside other ethical questions (for example, sustainability is a further consideration), is the measure of efficient food production. — John

But that is not the measure of farming well; it is the measure of farming efficiently. To do something well is not necessarily, and not necessarily just, doing it efficiently. Perhaps it would be in a case where there were no other concerns, but it is not the case here.

Similarly, the measure of playing tennis well is winning tournaments (which is, similarly, to leave aside questions such as the long term effects on the player's physical well-being, and so on). — John

Again, though, this is not the measure of playing well. One can win by cheating, for instance.

That's fair enough PB. I guess I didn't name any explicit targets because A) I'm trying to aim at broader tendencies and attitudes in philosophy than any one particular position, and B) I meant this thread as a continuation of some themes I've been exploring and poking at in some other recent threads I've posted. — StreetlightX

Yes, I realize that I might be missing a lot for not having read the other threads. But I do wonder where you are seeing these broad tendencies. At least within my own milieu, the ideas you seem to be going against are not even remotely popular. Wittgensteinian is dead, and postmodernism has never been popular among the English-speaking philosophers (cue Wittgensteinians' heads exploding over being associated with postmodernists).

1. First, it allows us to precisely specify the status of language as simply one element among a broader world wherein it holds no particularly special place. This perhaps seems rather commonsense, but it short-circuits the vulgar arguments about how we can never 'get outside of language' or how 'language can only refer to language', fueling the fires of some varieties of linguistic idealism. — StreetlightX

Ah, I see. From what you had written above, it seemed like you were arguing in favor of linguistic idealism (which would thereby increase my sense that what I was reading was both confused and confusing).

2. Second, it paves the way for a naturalization of sense. The question of sense is a particularly vexed one in philosophy, insofar as - excepting religious discourse which tries to attribute some conceptually incoherent and divinely ordained 'meaning' to the world - sense is very often understood to be some sort of 'subjective' veneer thrown over an asensate 'objective' state of affairs. — StreetlightX

Are you thinking of Frege here? Because I don't think this would be an accurate representation of what he's getting at when he talks about senses and referents. Even the Lockean can accept both a radical conventionalism and the claim that sense can be naturalized (since the conventions grow out of something external even we ultimately gain control of them to the point where we gain an awareness and control of speaker meaning). So maybe you have someone else in mind?

But if we can untether sense from language, we can begin to understand sense as more than just a sort of subjective epiphenomenon that tends to be tied to language in it's syntactic, grammar-bound (and hence 'merely' human) form. One can begin to speak of an alinguistic sense that is operative at the level of bodies - whether it be in the movements of autistics or the tonal inflections of crying babies. — StreetlightX

I think my real problem here is that I just can't think of a currently popular position that denies this. But again, this might be due to my academic milieu. Contemporary analytic philosophy of language has been so given over to evolutionary explanations that the notion of sense as a subjective epiphenomenon has no foothold.

I'm clearly not addressing you point by point here, but I just wanna give a taste of the motivations at work in the OP. — StreetlightX

I think that's the proper strategy. Maybe I just need to go back and read the other threads because I'm clearly still missing something important.

It's perhaps fair to say that our 'spontaneous', everyday approach to language is to hold 'adult' language as the standard to which all use of language ought to conform. Or, to make a slightly stronger claim, that the adult use of language just is what it means to use language, and every other manner of language use is in some way deficient, derivative, or a distortion of the 'proper' way of using language — StreetlightX

I actually don't agree with either of these. There may be such a thing as proper English and deficient, derivative, or distorted versions of it, as well as proper forms of French, Akan, Hindi, et cetera and deficient, derivative, or distorted versions of them, but I don't see why we should think that all languages ought to conform to their conventions or that doing so is what it means to use language. So in the case of a natural language like English, perhaps speaking it in the "adult" way just is what it means to use that language; but it doesn't follow from this that using language in a way comparable to adult English just is what it means to use language. Nor do I think that popular opinion (let alone common philosophical opinion) holds otherwise. If anything, the popular notion of a language is rather loose (to the point where people feel comfortable referring to honey bee waggle dances and vervet monkey signals as languages despite academic controversies over how to categorize them).

In more technical terms, we can say that we tend to think of the development of our linguistic ability in terms of a teleology where the ultimate aim, as it were, is to speak properly. — StreetlightX

Following up on the above, I think it would be more accurate to say that we tend to think of the learning of a specific language (like English) in terms of a teleology where the ultimate aim is to speak that language properly (where "properly" means something like "in accord with the relevant set of intersubjectively developed conventions"). The further contention that this just is what it means to speak properly, or that it is the only way to speak properly, seems unfounded. And ascribing it to the general populace seems to misunderstand their intentions in teaching language to others. If a parent tries teaching a child English and they come out speaking German, then the parent will be frustrated even if the child speaks "adult" German flawlessly. Similarly, a German teacher will not accept "but I am speaking properly according to the conventions of adult English" as an excuse for being unable to utter a single complete sentence in German.

What's of interest here is that language as we (adults) know it is primarily the result of a process of elimination - where what is 'eliminated' is the free-play of babbling, cooing and squealing noises into a set of narrower, constrained set of well-ordered phonemes that in fact constitute 'well spoken' language. — StreetlightX

I'm pretty sure that I am as capable of doing this as I ever was. So the ability hasn't really been eliminated. I've just learned that in order to communicate with others, I have two options: use one of the existing set of linguistic conventions, or forge a new one. The former is much easier (and the only one made explicit to me by my parents), so I went with that. But there are certainly people who attempt the second option from time to time.

To use language 'properly' is in fact to use language in an incredibly peculiar manner. A moment's reflection makes this quite obvious - the sheer number of different languages in the world attest to peculiarity of any one particular tongue. — StreetlightX

I think there might be an illegitimate shift going on here. That the use of any given language is peculiar (in the sense of unusual) due to the number of languages doesn't seem to be evidence for the claim that using (a) language in "properly" or in the "adult" way is peculiar (in any sense—and certainly not in the same sense given that it is quite ordinary for people to speak "adult" languages).

This small 'course correction' in our consideration of language, although seemingly obvious from a certain perspective, does in fact have some rather interesting philosophical ramifications. Specifically, it renders moot any attempt to try and secure a fabled 'extra-linguistic' reality by means of (proper) language alone. — StreetlightX

I have no idea what you mean by "secure" here. And unless it is being used as an odd synonym for "describe," I'm not sure what or whose project you might be objecting to. I'm also curious whether "fabled 'extra-linguistic' reality" is supposed to mean that you don't think there is any such thing as an extra-linguistic reality. Indeed, it would seem problematic for your argument if you did think such a thing when combined with other things you seem to think are true about language. Specifically, if there is no extra-linguistic reality, and if our language declares everything other than "proper" language to not be language, then there's no way of refuting such declarations. You can only get people to agree to new conventions (which changes what is true without refuting what was true), and anyone who wants to resist the change can dismiss your claims as nonsense until you succeed in shifting the intersubjective agreement.

It does this not in order to institute an ever strengthened linguistic idealism, but to exorcise idealism from language once and for all: by relativizing 'proper language' as an instance of a wider, more generalized phenomenon — StreetlightX

Again, this doesn't seem like anything revolutionary. So if you are trying to undermine an existing tradition, it is unclear how this move helps.

the very status of language itself is rendered 'extra-linguistic' — StreetlightX

I have no idea what this means. Was the status of language itself ever not extra-linguistic? The status of language is the status of language. That it may be described a certain way within the language doesn't make the status itself intra-linguistic.

making irrelevant any attempt to secure or reject metaphysical theses based on 'intra-linguistic' moves alone. — StreetlightX

I am again curious who the target is here. I can think of at least two opposing traditions that might both be seen as being in your sights here (both the ordinary language tradition and the metaphysicians of the post-Positivism/post-linguistic turn era). I suppose the moves you make might be a bit more relevant against the ordinary language movement, but that's more or less dead among contemporary philosophers. Contemporary metaphysicians, on the other hand, would deny that they are attempting to secure or reject metaphysical theses based on intra-linguistic moves alone.

Or rather, the very notion of an 'outside' or an 'inside' of language is deprived of sense, to the degree that language is always-already situated beyond itself and in relation to a milieu of human and even non-human action (a certain vocalization, intersubjective interaction, social convention and semantic resonances, etc). — StreetlightX

And again, I don't see how this follows. I have impressions I don't need words for, and things that I cannot describe in words. So it seems I still have room for understanding something as outside of any language I know (and thus something that can be outside language, even if there might be some language that can describe it even though mine cannot).

Ultimately, it is unclear what you are trying to get at here. But I'm less concerned about the conclusion (indeed, some of what I've written might be seen as helping that along) than I am with the argument for it.

It would be nice if we could retain the formatting when quoting highlighted text.

Well, for a start, Ethics is just one part of philosophy. — John

And according to some ways of thinking, the main part—and the part towards which all others are aimed. But we can leave such claims to the side. Ethics is part of philosophy; therefore, any obvious practical application of ethics is an obvious practical application of philosophy.

Epistemology and Metaphysics are arguably a much greater part of modern philosophy — John

By what measure? Specialists? Faculty positions? Dedicated journals? Publications? Word count? Metaphysics and epistemology wins out in some of these, and it loses in others. But even when it constitutes a greater proportion in one of these areas, it never constitutes a much greater proportion. In terms of people claiming a specialty in an M&E field versus in an ethics field, for instance, the ratio is 4:3 in favor of M&E (so greater, but not much greater).

and there don't seem to be any obvious practical applications of those. — John

The obvious practical application of epistemology is the scientific method (since scientists got it from philosophy), so any practical application of science is dependent upon this practical application of philosophy.

The fact that it "strikes you as extremely obvious" means little. — John

I see. If you are going to play games with such picayune matters of language, then I will state my meaning more plainly: ethics is an extremely obvious application of philosophy, and any competent thinker who considers it honestly for more than five seconds ought to recognize it as such. Is that more to your liking?

Can you present any actual data from any studies that show that philosophers have generally tended to live better lives than other humans? Because that is what you would need to show that philosophy actually does have practical applications. — John

This is an absurd straw man. One need not be a professional philosopher—or even much of a philosopher at all—in order to benefit from the products of philosophy (some examples of which are science, morality, and democracy).

Again, note that I have not claimed it has no practical applications; just that it has no obvious practical applications. — John

I have already noted this twice. I note it again a third time. I also disagree with it yet again. Your denial does not tell me that the practical applications of philosophy are not obvious. It only tells me that you are oblivious to them.

I think it is arguable that very many philosophers have spent more time on the latter than the former; more time, that is, thinking about living than engaging in practical pursuits. — John

Which arguably makes them bad philosophers in an important respect (though we may be better off overall if some philosophers dedicate themselves to theory, so perhaps they are not bad philosophers after all). Regardless, nothing follows from this about the products of their work or the practical applications thereof.

Also, the attribute of being "practical" is generally applied to ideas which facilitate the achievement of a very specific purpose. — John

False. "Practical" is opposed to "theoretical." Indeed, one of the oldest philosophical uses of the word (in cognate form, of course) comes from Aristotle's discussion of practical wisdom, which is an ability with broad applications. We could sum up those applications, but the term we would use to do so just causes further problems for your argument because the specific purpose at which practical wisdom aims in Aristotle is living well (aka eudaimonia). So again, it looks like you do not understand the words you are using (or at least, how they are used in a philosophical context—this being a philosophy forum, after all).

"Living well" is too nebulous a concept - impossible to quantify, or even to precisely qualify, to count as a specific purpose. — John

This seems to beg the question against any number of philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes of Sinope, Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, Pyrrho, and Aristippus of Cyrene being the most obvious, but also just about all medieval philosophers, the vast majority of early modern philosophers, and a growing number of contemporary philosophers). Granted, there are many accounts of what it takes to live well, but it does not follow from this that it is impossible to give a precise account of it.

Farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well, are all practical matters. What constitutes doing those well is easily determinable [...] What contributes to farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well (that is, what, in these ambits, has practical application) is also easily determinable. — John

And yet these are all still the subjects of debate (see the ongoing debates regarding the merits of organic agriculture, factory farms, and the treatment of farm animals, or the variations in technique among professional sailors and tennis coaches). So disagreement must not be a reliable guide to what is determinable.