I do not eat fish, that is not a relevant dilemma for me. Fisher does what he does to provide his family for food/shelter. A person who has another job to feed him self and his family but chooses to kill living animals for thrill is what I am looking down.
Actually I am not interested in defending my view, so you can all spare your breath.
Ethical hedonism
Ethical hedonism or
normative hedonism, as defined here, is the thesis that considerations of increasing pleasure and decreasing pain determine what we should do or which action is right.
[2] However, it is sometimes defined in a wider sense in terms of
intrinsic value, in which case it includes
axiological hedonism as defined below.
[15][1] It is different from
psychological hedonism since it
prescribes rather than describes our behavior. In the narrow sense, ethical hedonism is a form of
consequentialism since it determines the rightness of an action based on its consequences, which are measured here in terms of pleasure and pain.
[14] As such, it is subject to the main arguments in favor and against consequentialism. On the positive side, these include the intuition that the consequences of our actions matter and that through them we ought to make the world a better place.
[18] On the negative side, consequentialism would entail that we rarely if ever know right from wrong since our knowledge of the future is rather limited and the consequences of even simple actions may be vast.
[19] As a form of hedonism, it has some initial intuitive appeal since pleasure and pain seem to be relevant to how we should act.
[2] But it has been argued that it is morally objectable to see pleasure and pain as the only factors relevant to what we should do since this position seems to ignore, for example, values of justice, friendship and truth.
[14][2] Ethical hedonism is usually concerned with both pleasure and pain. But the more restricted version in the form of
negative consequentialism or
negative utilitarianism focuses only on reducing suffering.
[1][20][21][22] Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by
Aristippus of Cyrene, who held the idea that pleasure is the highest good.
[23][24]
Ethical hedonist theories can be classified in relation to whose pleasure should be increased. According to the
egoist version, each agent should only aim at maximizing her own pleasure. This position is usually not held in very high esteem.
[25][2] Altruist theories, commonly known by the term "
classical utilitarianism", are more respectable in the philosophical community. They hold that the agent should maximize the sum-total of everyone's happiness.
[26][2] This sum-total includes the agent's pleasure as well, but only as one factor among many. A common objection against utilitarianism is that it is too
demanding.
[27][28] This is most pronounced in cases where the agent has to sacrifice his own happiness in order to promote someone else's happiness. For example, various commentators have directed this argument against
Peter Singer's position, who suggests along similar lines that the right thing to do for most people living in developed countries would be to donate a significant portion of their income to charities, which appears overly demanding to many.
[29][30] Singer justifies his position by pointing out that the suffering that can be avoided in third world countries this way considerably outweighs the pleasure gained from how the money would be spent otherwise.
[31] Another important objection to utilitarianism is that it disregards the personal nature of moral duties, for example, that it may be more important to promote the happiness of those close to us, e.g. of our family and friends, even if the alternative course of actions would result in slightly more happiness for a stranger.
[32]