Is the EA approach to animal welfare misguided?

Reflections on David Clough's article in The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does

By Vesa Hautala

Earlier this year, a book called The good it promises, the harm it does: Critical essays on Effective Altruism was published. It is a collection of writings critical of effective altruism by philosophers and activists, focusing on how EA operates in the cause area of animal welfare. 

One of the authors is David Clough, a Christian animal advocate, co-founder and strategist of CreatureKind, and Professor in Theology and Applied Sciences at the University of Aberdeen and author of On Animals, a two-volume work on animal theology. This post presents my reflections on his article A Christian Critique of the Effective Altruism Approach to Animal Philanthropy. I focus on the criticism of EA in principle, because I’m personally less knowledgeable about the animal advocacy space.

Clough’s critique of EA builds on a criticism of utilitarian ethics underlying EA. He thinks utilitarianism is too narrow a framework for evaluating real-world ethical actions. This is because it insists on examining just the consequences of actions, and even those only in terms of how much welfare they produce, instead of taking into account all morally relevant aspects of the situation and persons involved. These include things like virtue, care, relationships, duty, etc. Clough thinks Christian ethics is pluralistic in the sense that it considers all of these.

I am sympathetic to this criticism of utilitarianism. It seems to me that Christian ethics is indeed more ‘pluralistic’ than utilitarianism. But I don’t see the flaws of utilitarianism, however real they may be, as fatal to EA project. While EA is highly influenced by utilitarianism, it doesn’t require utilitarianism. There are EAs with a virtue ethics outlook, William MacAskill’s definition of EA is independent of any particular moral system, and Richard Y. Chappell points out that instead of requiring utilitarian views, EA requires only a commitment to a very basic view he calls beneficentrism: “promoting the general welfare is deeply important, and should be amongst one’s central life projects”.

Utilitarianism itself can accommodate a wider range of moral considerations than just utility calculations. Two-level utilitarianism is an approach which acknowledges that while ultimately the welfare consequences of actions are what matters morally, it is too difficult and even dangerous to make decisions by attempting to calculate these for every single action. The best result is instead achieved by mostly following heuristics and norms, which take the form of duties, virtues, etc.

According to Clough, EA's dependence on utilitarian principles leads it to promote a limited perspective as the one definitive, scientifically-backed method for achieving the most good, but its solutions are often overly simplistic, focusing solely on easily quantifiable metrics. As a result, there is a risk of neglecting more effective alternatives or inadvertently endorsing harmful practices. He uses as an example a farmed animal sanctuary where animals rescued from abuse live the rest of their lives in peace. A charity like this would be dismissed by the effectiveness considerations of EA, but he thinks it could have a lot of value in producing lasting change via character formation. People’s hearts could be changed towards animals when they see them living as flourishing individuals outside the food production system. Making people actually care about animal suffering and flourishing could produce more robust long-term change than focusing on changing consumer behaviour. Clough believes EA may underestimate the value of character formation because it is looking only for short-term measurable consequences.

This line of criticism is legible within the EA approach. It can be read in terms of impact maximisation and turned into the kind of debate about what actually are the best ways to help animals that EAs should welcome. The question becomes how good evidence there is that the things they accuse EA of neglecting actually provides more wellbeing in the long run. This could be a very interesting discussion!

However, Clough is explicit that his criticism goes deeper. He argues that due to its reliance on utilitarianism, EA decision making has fundamental blindspots. Another example he mentions in the article helps illustrate this. There was a campaign to change the practice of US military dogs being killed when they were no longer useful for service. This seems wrong because of a sense that something is owed to the dogs for their service, but EA would have failed to even consider this because it narrowly considers only welfare.

Beyond just blindspots, the whole concept of a best solution is suspect. According to Clough, absolute right answers do not and cannot exist because of the complexity of ethical decision making.

On a philosophical level, criticizing EA for pushing its solution as the only right ones depends on assuming that EA is normative. (Concerning the criticism of actual EA funding decisions that are made in the book, this has no relevance.) Some think this is the case, while other prominent voices within the movement disagree. In practice, most people in EA care about other things than impartially maximising welfare, like their families and duties to other particular people—or animals. An EA directing some of their donations to animal sanctuaries is not a contradiction. It is true EA answers a rather narrow question: how should money be allocated such that in terms of expected value, the maximal amount of animal suffering is avoided? If you want to do that, there is a quite strong case to be made that EA has at least good guesses about the answer. But whether this is something you want, or the only thing you want, is a different question. EA doesn’t say anything about it if it’s interpreted non-normatively. 

In the end, I’m left wondering about trade-offs. We have limited resources and cannot pursue all good things or help all those who suffer. We cannot escape the choice of who and what to prioritise, because spending resources on something always means we are not using them for something else. In my experience, EAs are unusually aware of this. Their obsession with measuring effectiveness is not borne out of a dispassionate interest in efficiency. Rather it is that of a doctor doing triage. EAs do what they do because many of them are the kinds of people who weep for the suffering of billions of pigs, cows, and chickens, and even fish and shrimp. The pressure to be efficient and do things that have a demonstrable impact derives from this weight of suffering. The questions EA wants to ask its critics is “Are we sure it works better than the interventions EA proposes?” and “Is it more important than easing the extreme suffering experienced by so many creatures?” These questions are asked because so much is at stake.

I believe the EA approach is useful even granting that considerations like duties may at times overrule mere “dolorific calculus”. I think there is value in animal individuals as unique creations of God independent of their capacity for welfare, which might lead to some differences from merely welfare-oriented recommendations. But I think reducing suffering is a robust way to compare interventions when we must make heavy decisions about prioritisation, even if we grant it’s not the only concern. Any plausible value system gives weight to welfare and suffering. The suffering EA seeks to reduce also overlaps with other possible concerns like dignity and flourishing. It is also so extreme that it likely should have a lot of weight across many different ethical systems.