Volume III · Animals and the Harm of Death · chapter 7
Do Animals Have Weaker Psychological Connectedness?
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
Even if psychological connectedness to the future mattered for the harm of death, simpler minds may have proportionally greater connectedness, since their contents vary less; and strong connectedness doesn't even seem necessary for being greatly harmed.
Some people say animals “don't remember” who they were, so dying isn't serious. But a simpler mind may change less over time, and so be even more “connected” to itself.
A bookshelf with ten books that keeps nine of them from one year to the next has changed less than a library with a thousand books that kept five hundred. Having less doesn't mean keeping less in proportion.
- P1 The objection says animals have weak psychological connectedness to the future, and so are only slightly harmed by death.
- P2 Simpler minds tend to vary less, which can mean a greater proportion of contents in common.
- P3 Moreover, someone who has lived only briefly and would have a good future is greatly harmed by dying, whatever their psychological connectedness.
- C Therefore, psychological connectedness doesn't show that animals are only slightly harmed by death.
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 “Animals live in the present; they have no future “self.””
Answer Even so, he will have experiences in the future, and those are what death deprives him of. And living more in the present may even mean greater psychological continuity.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume III, p. 28 of the PDF edition · English translation
It is sometimes argued that, for someone to be greatly harmed by death, they must maintain strong with their future36. By psychological connectedness is meant the degree to which memories, character traits, beliefs, desires, intentions, etc., are retained.
Proponents of this view claim that nonhuman animals (or at least many of them), because they have less cognitive complexity, have very weak psychological connectedness and are therefore hardly harmed by death at all: "it is almost as if the future they lose in dying were someone else's future37". This idea is sometimes used to argue that there would be nothing very wrong with killing them or failing to save their lives.
One possible criticism of this view is to question the claim that, for someone to be seriously harmed by death, it is necessary to maintain strong psychological connectedness with their future. We will return to this criticism in chapter 9.
In this chapter we will look at another possible kind of criticism of this position: questioning the claim that beings with lesser cognitive capacities have little psychological connectedness with their future38. Below we will look at an example that illustrates this criticism39.
Suppose that A at instant T1 has 10 mental contents and at instant T2 also has 10, retaining 9 of those already present at T1 and replacing a single content. B also had 10 mental contents at T1, and at T2 retained all 10, but gained another 90.
| Individual | Mental contents at T1 | Mental contents at T2 | Contents in common | New contents | Proportion retained |
| A | 10 | 10 (9+1) | 9 | 1 | 90% |
| B | 10 | 100 (10+90) | 10 | 90 | 10% |
If the degree of psychological connectedness is measured by the number of mental contents in common, B has greater psychological connectedness (10 contents in common, compared to A's 9).
On the other hand, if the degree of psychological connectedness depends instead on the proportion of mental contents in common, it is A who has greater psychological connectedness (A retained 90% of its mental contents, while B retained only 10%), even though B's mind is more complex.
On this basis it could be said that, if what the concept of psychological connectedness aims to express is how psychologically similar someone is from one instant to another, then the appropriate way to measure it is in terms of the proportion of mental contents in common, not their number.
If so, then less cognitively sophisticated beings do not necessarily have little psychological connectedness with their future selves. On the contrary: since the proportion of the mental contents of less cognitively complex beings varies less, they may be psychologically connected to their futures much more strongly than cognitively more complex beings are.
Thus, even if the degree of psychological connectedness is relevant to the magnitude of the , this does not imply that nonhuman animals or humans with lesser cognitive capacities are only slightly harmed by death — quite the contrary. Moreover, as we have seen, it is also possible to question the thesis that the degree of psychological connectedness is relevant to the magnitude of the harm of death. We will look at this criticism in chapter 9.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
In the chapter's example, B has 10 contents in common and A has 9. Why doesn't that settle the question?
The chapter says psychological connectedness...
Food for thought
Are you “the same person” you were at age three? Would dying at that age have been a small harm?
Author’s notes 4
- 36 See, for example, 's view (2002). ↩
- 37 This statement is actually made by McMahan (2002, p. 170) in reference to the death of young children, but he applies the same thesis to the death of many kinds of nonhuman animals. ↩
- 38 This criticism can be found in (2007, p. 752) and (2016, p. 22). ↩
- 39 This example was adapted from Faria (2016, p. 22). ↩
Sources cited in this text 3
The full list for the volume is in the Volume III references.
- FARIA, C. Animal Ethics Goes Wild: The Problem of Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016.
- HORTA, O. Un desafío para la bioética: la cuestión del especismo. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia). Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2007.
- MCMAHAN, J. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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