The Claim That Having Little Time Left Makes Death a Small Harm

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume III, p. 38 of the PDF edition · English translation

10.1. The claim that it is not wrong to kill animals who have little time ahead of them

One position sometimes defended is that animals who would have little lifetime ahead of them would be only slightly harmed by death. Having little lifetime ahead is something that could occur: (1) either when the characteristic lifespan of the animal's species is short; (2) or when it is long, but the animal is near the end of that lifespan. According to this position, under these conditions there would be nothing wrong with killing them.

There are at least two ways of questioning this position. The first is to question the thesis that, if someone has little lifetime ahead of them, they are only slightly harmed by death. The second is to argue that someone's being only slightly harmed by death is not enough to justify killing them. We will look at each of these challenges separately below.

10.2. Various ways of calculating the magnitude of the harm of death

Let us first examine the claim that having little lifetime ahead makes death a small harm. Underlying this claim is the idea that the seriousness of the harm of death should be measured solely on the basis of the time remaining to be lived.

However, as we saw in chapter 5, another crucial factor in measuring the magnitude of the harm of death⁵⁰ is how positive or negative the life would be (the life remaining to be lived and/or the life lived so far, as we will detail later on). We saw that in the literature on the magnitude of the harm of death, one form of measurement that relates the two factors (multiplying time by quality of life at each instant) is QALYs (Quality-Adjusted Life Years)⁵¹. In this sense, we say that an individual would have an amount X of QALYs ahead and has already enjoyed an amount X of QALYs so far. Taking this into account, it is possible that A has more lifetime ahead than B, but that it is B who has more QALYs ahead, given that the expected level of B's future well-being is higher.

However, since we are assessing only the claim that having little lifetime ahead makes death a slight harm, for the sake of simplicity we will assume that the individuals being compared will have the same amount of well-being ahead, and that this well-being will be positive to the point that death is a harm.

To assess the claim that having little lifetime ahead makes death a trivial harm, it is important to note that there are various ways of measuring how serious the harm of death is, taking into account the moment at which it occurs. Some of them follow.

The first two take into account either only the future or only the past:

(1) Future only. The greater the amount of time remaining, the greater the harm of death.

(2) Past only. The less someone has lived so far, the greater the harm of death.

There are other forms that take into account both the future and the past. However, there are many ways of establishing the relation between these two factors in measuring the magnitude of the harm of death. Two examples follow:

(3) Percentage. The smaller the percentage of life expectancy that the time lived so far represents, the greater the harm of death. For example, imagine that an animal belongs to a species whose typical lifespan is one year, and it dies at one month of age. It has thus lived 8.3% of what it could have lived. According to the formula in question, the harm of its death is 91.7% (100% being the maximum harm, which is when someone dies as soon as they begin to exist as a sentient being).

(4) Priority. This consists in measuring the magnitude of the harm of death on the assumption that the less someone has lived so far, the more value an additional instant of life has⁵². Thus, suppose that A and B would have 40 years of life ahead of them, but that A has lived 20 years so far and B has lived only 10. According to this way of measuring, although A and B have the same lifetime ahead, that time would be more valuable for B because he has lived less up to

now. This way of measuring will give different results from the one based on percentage. For example, suppose that A has a lifespan of 20 years and has already lived 10 years, and that B has a lifespan of 10 years and has already lived 5 years. According to the Percentage formula, the magnitude of the harm of death is the same for both, since both have lived 50% of the total. According to the Priority formula, by contrast, it would be taken into account both that the time remaining for A is greater and that the time lived so far by B has been less.

As we saw in chapter 5, one formula for measuring the magnitude of the harm of death according to this conception would be the following⁵³: g(T) – g(P), where T is the total well-being of the individual's life if they lived to the maximum of their life expectancy, P is the well-being the individual has lived so far, and g is a strictly increasing and strictly concave function. It is strictly increasing because the more well-being an individual has had so far, the more value the total well-being has. And it is concave to represent the idea that the less well-being someone has had so far, the greater the harm of not having an additional unit of well-being.

Below we will see how each of these forms of measurement would have to assess the magnitude of the harm of death.

10.3. Assessing the magnitude of the harm of death according to four formulas

(1) According to the Future only formula, the harm of death for individuals who have little lifetime left ahead would be smaller (compared to individuals who have more time left), whether they are individuals whose lifespan is short or individuals whose lifespan is long and who are at the end of that lifespan. For example, suppose that an animal has a lifespan of 1 year and has lived 1 month so far, and that a human (whose average life expectancy is 73 years) has lived 72 years and 1 month so far. According to this

way of measuring, the magnitude of the harm of death is the same for both, since what they have left is 11 months.

An important observation regarding this formula is that it does not necessarily imply that individuals who have less time ahead are only slightly harmed by death. It implies only that they are less harmed than individuals who have more time left. This is so because the point at which a line could be drawn to establish how much remaining time it takes for death to become a serious harm is variable. For example, if what we have left is one month of positive life, we would probably already say that we have lost something significant. And certainly, if it were a year, we would say that we have lost something very significant. Thus, even this formula would still not imply that animals who have little time ahead are only slightly harmed by death.

For example, suppose that a human is born with a disease and we know that the most they will be able to live is a few years (and that until then their life can be satisfactory). We would not say that this human is only slightly harmed by a premature death merely because their life expectancy is short. Quite the contrary: it seems that they are harmed to a high degree if they cannot experience the little time they still have left.

(2) According to the Past only formula, how much someone has ahead does not matter: all that matters is how much that someone has lived so far. According to this formula, all nonhuman animals (regardless of the length of their lifespans and of how much they have left to live) are as harmed by death as humans who died at the same age would be.

(3) According to the Percentage formula, neither the length of the lifespan nor the amount of time remaining to be enjoyed matters directly: all that matters directly is how much the time lived so far represents as a percentage of the total expectancy. For example, according to this formula a nonhuman animal who is killed at 15% of their lifespan is as harmed by death as a human killed at 15% of their lifespan would be, whatever the length of the typical lifespan of each species.

(4) According to the Priority formula, the time remaining to be lived would have to be weighed against what has been lived so far. For example, let us again compare an animal with a life expectancy of 1 year who has lived 1 month so far with a human (whose average life expectancy is 73 years) who has lived 72 years and 1 month so far. According to the Priority formula, in this case the nonhuman animal would be harmed by death to a greater degree than the human, since, although both have the same lifetime ahead, the nonhuman animal has lived much less so far. Of course, according to this formula the magnitude of the harm of death would vary greatly, depending on how much the remaining time and the time lived so far varied for the individuals being compared. However, according to this formula, in most cases the harm of death for nonhuman animals is greater than according to the Future Only formula.

10.4. Conclusion regarding the harm of death and the moment at which it occurs

Of all four formulas we have seen, the one that takes into account only future time is the one least favorable to recognizing that death greatly harms animals who have little lifetime ahead. However, as we have seen, even this formula would have to recognize that they are as harmed by death as humans with the same lifetime ahead would be.

We also saw that there are at least three other formulas, and that all of them generally imply recognizing a greater harm of death than the formula that takes into account only the future. This is because all these other formulas take past factors into account (exclusively or in addition). As we saw in section 5.3, the importance of taking past factors into account can be explained by the following analogy: if I have already eaten five slices of a cake, missing out on one more harms me less than it would if I had eaten only one.

10.5. What if the passage of time is different for animals of different species?

It is possible that members of different species have a different perception of the passage of time. According to one theory, smaller animals would have brains that process information more quickly, making their “internal clock” that marks the perception of the passage of time run faster, such that what seems to us a week would be experienced by such an animal as the equivalent of months or years⁵⁴.

Let us call this theory the Different Time Theory (DTT), since it holds that the passage of time is perceived at different speeds by animals of different species. In contrast, let us call the theory holding that this perception is the same, regardless of species, the Equal Time Theory (ETT).

It could be said that, if the DTT is correct, animals who have a short lifespan would in fact have already enjoyed much more time so far, and that we would have to take this into account when assessing the magnitude of the harm of death. This is true, but it does not necessarily imply that the formulas that take the past into account would have to maintain that such animals are only slightly harmed by death. Below we will see how each of the four formulas above would have to assess this question if the DTT is correct.

• The Future Only formula would have to maintain that the harm of death for these animals, if the DTT is correct, would be greater than if the ETT is correct, since they would then have more time of enjoyment ahead (how much greater would depend on how much faster their internal clock marking the perception of the passage of time is).
• According to the Past Only formula, the harm of death for these animals would be smaller than if the subjective passage of time were the same, but this would not imply that the harm of death would necessarily be small.
• According to the Proportion formula, there would be no change at all in the magnitude of the harm of death, since for this formula what matters is how much the moment of death represents as a proportion of the total lifespan, not the length of the lifespan.
• According to the Priority formula, while the fact that they have experienced more subjective time so far would contribute to decreasing the magnitude of the harm of death, the fact that they have a greater amount of subjective time ahead would contribute to increasing the harm of death.

In short, whether it is the DTT or the ETT that is correct, there seems to be no basis for claiming that death harms sentient beings only slightly, even those who have little lifetime ahead.

10.6. If someone has little lifetime ahead, does that justify killing them?

In the previous sections we saw that it is possible to question the claim that, because someone has little lifetime ahead, they are only slightly harmed by death. However, let us assume for the sake of argument that, under such conditions, an individual is only slightly harmed by death. This does not seem enough to justify killing them. For example, even if a human has only a few months, or just a few more days (or even a single day) of positive life ahead, it is normally considered unacceptable to kill them, even while recognizing that, in this case, the magnitude of the harm of death for them would be much smaller than if they had years of life ahead.

Those who hold that it is right to kill a nonhuman animal who has little lifetime ahead would then have to hold that it is right to kill any human who has the same lifetime ahead. One alternative is for them to accept that a human's having little lifetime left is no justification for killing them. But then this implies accepting that a nonhuman animal's having little lifetime ahead is no justification for killing them either.

The only way to deny these implications would be to demonstrate that humans should have a special status that would protect them under these conditions, one that would be absent in the case of nonhuman animals. However, as we will discuss in detail in chapter 12, there seems to be no justification for assigning differentiated moral statuses. If this is correct, then the implications above remain the same, whether those affected by the decision are human or nonhuman animals.