Discussing the Claim That Animals Are Not Harmed by Death

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume III, p. 11 of the PDF edition · English translation

2.1. Views that deny that animals are harmed by death

A common position is that there is nothing wrong with consuming animals, as long as they have had minimally meaningful lives and have been killed painlessly. This position is often defended by claiming that nonhuman animals are not harmed by death. Below, we will discuss this claim.

2.2. To be harmed by death, must one understand what death is?

It is sometimes claimed that nonhuman animals are not harmed by death because they allegedly do not understand what death is. However, we can ask: "why, for someone to be harmed by death, must they understand what death is?". Below we will examine two attempted explanations.

The first claims that it is because understanding what death is is necessary for fearing death. According to this view, death itself would not be a harm: instead, the harm is the fear of dying itself.

One problem with this explanation is that it only makes sense to fear dying if death is a harm. But if it is not the fear of dying that makes death a harm (such fear arises from the recognition that death is already a harm), then for someone to be harmed by death it is not necessary for them to fear dying.

A second attempted explanation recognizes that death is a harm because it deprives the individual of continuing to enjoy their life. However, it claims that, for someone to be harmed by an event that deprives them of something, they must value that something. Yet this view maintains that for someone to value something, they must understand the misfortune that losing it would be. That is why it maintains that, for someone to value the continuation of their life, they need to understand what it is to be dead⁶.

One way to reject this conception is to deny that, for someone to be harmed by being unable to experience something, they must understand the misfortune of losing it. For example, a baby is certainly harmed if prevented from nursing, even if it does not understand the harm it will suffer if this happens. Since nursing produces a positive experience for the baby, it makes sense to say that the baby values nursing.

In the same way, it makes sense to claim that nonhuman animals value the positive experiences they have in their lives, and that they are harmed by death because it prevents them from having these experiences, even if they do not understand the misfortune that death would bring them. In short, there is a difference between "suffering a loss" and "being aware of the loss one would suffer"⁷.

2.3. For death to be a harm, must it frustrate a future-oriented desire?

Another argument sometimes put forward to try to establish that nonhuman animals (or at least many of them) are not harmed by death is the claim that, for someone to be harmed by death, death must prevent the fulfillment of some future-oriented desire⁸. For example, if someone plans to travel next month and dies today, they are harmed because they never get to carry out what they planned.

According to this view, some nonhuman animals are harmed by death (those capable of having future-oriented desires, such as the pig who hides food to eat later), but this would not be the case for many other animals, nor for many humans (for example, children up to a certain age), because they would not be capable of having future-oriented desires.

One possible criticism of this view is that it wrongly assumes that a condition that is sufficient for someone to be harmed by death is also a necessary condition for it. For example, it could be said that an individual is harmed when they fail to fulfill a future-oriented desire not because of having the desire, but because of not enjoying the object of their desire. This suggests that the harm would lie in the absence of the enjoyment of that object, regardless of whether or not the individual had formed the desire to enjoy it in the future.

For example, imagine that two small children are going to be taken to a playground tomorrow and will have a great time, but that only one of the two is already able to understand the notion of "tomorrow" and form the desire to go to the playground tomorrow. If both die today, it seems that both are harmed by not getting to have fun at the playground, and not only the one who had formed a desire to go to the playground tomorrow. Indeed, if the child who is unable to plan for the future were going to have more fun than the one able to plan for the future, it seems that she would be more harmed by not getting to go to the playground than the other. This suggests that being capable of having future-oriented desires is not necessary for someone to be harmed by death, nor does it determine how much someone is harmed by death⁹.

2.4. When are sentient beings harmed by death (and when are they not)?

A widely accepted position is that death is a harm because it prevents the positive things the individual would enjoy if they stayed alive¹⁰. Among authors who accept this account of the harm of death, there is disagreement about what the positive things are that death would prevent. In this sense it is possible to distinguish at least four accounts of why death is a harm:

(1) Because it prevents the positive experiences someone would have if they stayed alive¹¹;

(2) Because it prevents the fulfillment of any and every desire the individual has¹² (and not only those directed toward the future);

(3) Because it prevents the fulfillment not of the desires the individual actually has, but of the desires they would have if they were fully rational and had the relevant information¹³;

(4) Because it prevents the individual from experiencing objective goods (for example, in addition to pleasure, also the development of capacities, certain kinds of relationships, etc.)¹⁴.

These accounts are not mutually exclusive. For example, it could be said that an individual is harmed by death because they are deprived of enjoying positive experiences and also because it frustrates their desires and prevents them from experiencing objective goods.

Moreover, accounts 2, 3, and 4 usually incorporate the first account¹⁵, so that the deprivation of positive experiences is a sufficient condition for death to be a harm.

In general terms, these accounts converge on the following conclusion: death is a harm when, comparing being dead with the life that would await the individual if they did not die (in terms of the proportion between positive and negative events), it would be better for that individual to stay alive.

If this is correct, then every sentient being with the possibility of a minimally meaningful life ahead of them is harmed by death, regardless of what species they belong to and of the degree of their cognitive capacities.