Volume II · Considering Sentient Beings · chapter 3
What Is Sentience and Why Does It Matter?
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
Sentience is the capacity to have positive and negative experiences; it's what makes someone a “someone” rather than a “something,” and so able to be harmed by the presence of what's bad or the absence of what's good.
A rock doesn't feel anything: if you kick a rock, nothing bad happens to it. A cat feels: if you kick a cat, he suffers. Feeling is what makes it possible for someone to be hurt or to be happy.
Sentience is like there being “someone home.” An empty house can get rained on without anyone getting wet; a house with someone living in it can't.
- P1 To be harmed or benefited, things have to be able to be experienced as good or bad.
- P2 Sentience is the capacity to have those experiences.
- P3 So only sentient beings can be harmed or benefited.
- C Therefore, sentience is what matters for moral consideration.
The chapter’s central argument in logical form. If the premises are true, the conclusion follows. To disagree, you have to show which premise is false.
They say “But a tree can be harmed too when we cut it down.”
Answer Without experience, there's no one for whom the cutting is bad. A tree can be damaged the way a car is damaged, but not harmed in the moral sense.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume II, p. 14 of the PDF edition · English translation
If what is relevant to knowing to whom to give moral consideration is knowing who can be harmed and benefited, then it is important to investigate what makes someone capable of being harmed and benefited. That is where the importance of sentience6 lies.
The term "" is used in the animal ethics debate as a synonym for consciousness. It refers to any and every experience someone could have, starting with the simplest. It also refers to any other mental state someone could have, such as desires, intentions, memories, and so on. It is what makes there be someone, an individual inhabiting a body, and not merely a living, empty body. It is what separates, on the one hand, a human, a dog, a fish, and a bee7 and, on the other, a shoe, a plant, a bacterium, and a fungus. Thus, sentience determines who can be harmed or benefited because it is sentience, in the first place, that determines when there is someone and not merely something.
Moreover, another feature of sentience, essential for there to be the possibility of harm and benefit, is that experiences have what is called 8 - that is, they can be experienced as positive or negative. This is also what makes sentient beings prefer to be in a certain condition rather than another (that is, it is what gives them desires and preferences).
For this reason, there are two basic ways in which a sentient being is harmed: by the presence of what is negative for them (as happens when they suffer, for example) and by the absence of what is positive for them (as happens when they die or are in some other way prevented from enjoying something that would benefit them).
Similarly, there are two basic ways in which a sentient being is benefited: by the presence of what is positive for them (as happens when they feel pleasure, for example) and by the prevention of what is negative for them (as happens when suffering is relieved, for example).
That is why nonhuman animals need consideration. It is not because they belong to the animal kingdom, or because they are alive in a biological sense (as plants are, for example). It is because they are someone and because they are capable of being harmed or benefited.
Therefore, to know which beings to consider, it is important to know which ones are sentient. How can we investigate this? We will address this topic next.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
What are the two basic ways of harming a sentient being?
Why does sentience matter for ethics?
Food for thought
How would you explain the difference between “breaking” an object and “hurting” someone?
Author’s notes 3
- 6 For examples of defenses of the sentience criterion, see (1996[1989], p. 282n); (2002 [1979], p. 67); (2018a) and (2021, p. 57-61). ↩
- 7 On sentience in invertebrates, see Smith (1991); (2001); Mather e Anderson (2007); (2014) and Ética Animal (2019a, 2021d, 2022b). ↩
- 8 For a definition of valence, see Fridja (1986, p. 207). ↩
Sources cited in this text 12
The full list for the volume is in the Volume II references.
- BENTHAM, J. Introduction to the principles of moral and legislation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 [1789].
- BROOM, D. M. Sentience and animal welfare. Wallingford: CABI, 2014.
- CUNHA, L. C. Uma breve introdução à ética animal: desde as questões clássicas até o que vem sendo discutido atualmente. Curitiba: Appris, 2021.
- FRIDJA, N.H. The Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- HORTA, O. Moral Considerability and the Argument from Relevance. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, v. 31, n. 3, p. 369-388, 2018a.
- MATHER, J. A. Animal suffering: An invertebrate perspective. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, v. 4, p. 151-156, 2001.
- MATHER, J. A.; ANDERSON, R. C. Ethics and invertebrates: A cephalopod perspective. Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, v. 75, p. 119-129, 2007.
- SINGER, P. Ética Prática. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2002 [1979].
- SMITH, J. A. A question of pain in invertebrates. ILAR Journal, v. 33, p. 25-31, 1991.
- ÉTICA ANIMAL. Senciência em invertebrados: uma revisão da literatura neurocientífica. Ética Animal: ativismo e investigação em defesa dos animais, 20 ago. 2019a.
- ÉTICA ANIMAL. Senciência em invertebrados: uma revisão das evidências comportamentais. Ética Animal: ativismo e investigação em defesa dos animais, 20 jul. 2022b.
- ÉTICA ANIMAL. Uma fisiologia ilustrada do sistema nervoso de invertebrados. Ética Animal: ativismo e investigação em defesa dos animais, 3 set. 2021d.
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