What is relevant for knowing to whom we owe consideration?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 8 of the PDF edition · English translation

1.1. A double standard

Nonhuman animals are exploited and killed by humans every day for the most diverse purposes. They are used for food, clothing, as test models, for entertainment, leisure, and as workers or tools. These practices cause suffering and death to a gigantic number of nonhuman animals and are widely accepted. However, if the victims were human, such practices would be considered monstrous.

In addition to being victims of human practices, animals are also severely harmed by natural processes such as malnutrition, hunger, and thirst, disease, physical injuries, psychological stress, harsh weather events, natural disasters, and interspecific, intraspecific, and sexual conflicts. This is the typical situation of most animals living in the wild. The standard view is that we should not help them: instead, we should let nature take its course. But, again, if the victims were human, the standard view would be the opposite (that is, that resources should be devoted to helping them).

These attitudes reveal that a large share of people apply a double standard, depending on the species of those affected by their decisions. If they are nonhuman animals, they receive no help and are tortured and killed. If they are human, they receive full moral consideration. It is, therefore, an anthropocentric speciesist standard of morality. Speciesist because harms and benefits of similar magnitude are given different importance depending on the species of those affected. Anthropocentric because it disfavors those who do not belong to the human species.

1.2. Attempts to justify anthropocentric speciesism

There are several attempts to justify this moral double standard¹. Among the reasons most often given in an attempt to justify that either only the good of humans matters, or that it matters to a greater degree, are:

(1) The very fact that they belong to the human species.

(2) The fact that they belong to the same species we belong to.

(3) Metaphysical claims, such as that humans were created in the image and likeness of a creator; have a special relationship with that creator; have an immortal soul; have dignity; belong to a higher ontological category; and so on.

(4) The claim that humans have (or have the potential for) capacities such as reason, language, freedom, moral agency, a sense of justice, autonomy, culture, the capacity to make mutual agreements, to respect rights, to claim rights, and so on.

(5) The claim that humans have (or have the potential to have) various kinds of relationships, such as affective relationships, relationships of mutual solidarity, and political and power relationships.

(6) The fact that all humans belong to the same species as those who have those capacities or relationships (even though not all humans actually have them).

(7) The claim that the idea of species is not a mere social construct (it is based on biological characteristics).

(8) The claim that disregarding nonhuman animals is a natural attitude.

(9) The fact that animal exploitation is traditional and part of the culture of many peoples.

With regard to all these attempts, it makes sense to ask what relevance these things have for knowing whom we should consider morally. This applies to all those attempts to justify anthropocentrism, whether they are based on the criterion of membership in a certain species, on the possession of certain metaphysical characteristics, or on the possession of certain capacities or relationships, and also to those based on the fact that a distinction rests on a biological characteristic or on the fact that a behavior is natural or traditional.

Thus, this is a first problem with these attempts: they would have to explain why the criteria they use would be relevant to questions of moral consideration, rather than simply assuming them as though they were obvious. Moreover, there is an even more serious problem: there are reasons to think that none of these criteria is relevant for knowing to whom to give moral consideration. This is pointed out by the argument from relevance, presented below.

1.3. The argument from relevance

The argument from relevance² starts from the trivial premise that, for a criterion to be justified, it must be based on a distinction relevant to the question it seeks to answer. For example, what is relevant for evaluating a candidate for a medical team at a hospital is their medical skills, whether they are punctual, whether they treat patients well, and so on. For evaluating who should be seen in a hospital emergency room, on the other hand, what matters is knowing who is injured, who is seriously ill, who is at risk of dying, and so on.

Swapping the criteria would mean applying criteria that are relevant in one context to another in which they are not. For example, this would happen if it were required that, to be accepted to work on a medical team, someone would have to be ill, and that, to be seen by a doctor, someone would also have to be a doctor. Of course, the absurd attitude described in this example would hardly occur in real life. However, the argument from relevance points out that the anthropocentric standard of morality commits a very similar confusion. This will be explained in more detail below.

The argument from relevance holds that none of the defenses of anthropocentrism adopts relevant criteria for determining who should receive moral consideration. This would be so because what is at stake in questions of moral consideration is knowing how our acts and omissions could positively or negatively affect whoever is affected by them. To give moral consideration to someone is to act so as to avoid harming them and to seek to benefit them. If so, then the appropriate criterion for knowing to whom to give moral consideration is knowing who can be harmed and benefited.

The species to which someone belongs; whether or not they were created in the image and likeness of a deity; whether or not they have an immortal soul; whether or not they have certain capacities and certain relationships; whether or not they have the potential for such capacities or relationships; knowing whether or not a behavior is

natural or traditional, and so on: none of this determines who can be harmed or benefited. Therefore, these cannot be relevant characteristics for knowing to whom to give moral consideration.

On the other hand, being capable of having positive and negative experiences (that is, being capable of enjoyment and of suffering) determines whether someone can be harmed and benefited. It is for this reason that proponents of the argument from relevance hold that sentience is the appropriate criterion for moral consideration. In the following sections we will see what sentience is and how it is connected to the capacity to be harmed and benefited.

1.4. What is relevant for considering and what is relevant for holding responsible

Traditionally, criteria that are relevant for determining whom it would make sense to hold responsible have been applied to determine who should receive moral consideration. For example, it is commonly argued that, for us to have obligations toward someone, that someone must also be capable of recognizing obligations³; that, for someone to be protected by the principles of justice, they must have a sense of justice⁴; that, to have rights, one must be capable of understanding the notion of rights⁵; and so on. These claims have been widely used in an attempt to justify all the suffering and death caused to nonhuman animals. However, possessing these capacities may be relevant for knowing whom to hold responsible, but not for knowing whom to consider morally. This is already recognized in the case of babies, children, humans with cognitive disabilities, and so on. It is widely recognized that these humans are morally considerable even though they are not morally accountable. However, recognizing this implies recognizing that every sentient being, regardless of the species to which it belongs and of the capacities it has, should receive moral consideration.

The disregard that nonhuman animals typically receive occurs, at least in part, because of the belief that, for us to owe moral consideration to someone, that someone must also be capable of acting morally. However, as

the argument from relevance points out, this is a confusion analogous to thinking that, for someone to be seen by a doctor, that someone must also be a doctor.

1.5. The criterion of sentience

If what is relevant for 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. This is where the importance of sentience for ethics lies⁶.

The term "sentience" is used in the animal ethics debate as a synonym for consciousness in its broadest and most basic sense. It refers to each and every experience someone could have, starting with the simplest. It is what makes there be someone, an individual inhabiting a body, and not merely a living but "empty" body. It is what separates, on one side, a human, a dog, a fish, a crustacean, 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 in a body, and not merely something.

In addition, another characteristic of sentience, one directly connected to the capacity for harm and benefit, is that experiences have what is called valence⁸ - that is, they can be experienced as positive or negative. For example, if I step on a nail, I have a negative experience; if I listen to a piece of music I really like, I have a positive experience.

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).

It is for this reason that nonhuman animals need moral 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 simply because, being sentient, they can be harmed and benefited.

However, the criterion of sentience, like any other criterion, is also criticized. In the remaining chapters we will examine these criticisms as well as several other recurring questions related to sentience-centered ethics.