Volume VI · To Whom Do We Owe Moral Consideration? · chapter 4
According to the criterion of sentience, is suffering the only problem?
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
The sentience criterion doesn't recognize only suffering as harm: a sentient being is also harmed by the absence of what would be positive for them, as in death.
Someone who feels can be harmed in two ways: by suffering or by losing good things. Killing an animal painlessly still harms him, because he loses all the good things he would have lived.
Taking away someone's paycheck doesn't cause physical pain, but it harms them, because it takes away what they would have had that was good. Harm doesn't have to hurt.
- P1 A sentient being is harmed by the presence of what's negative and by the absence of what's positive.
- P2 Death is an example of harm through the absence of the positive.
- P3 So the sentience criterion recognizes harms that don't involve suffering.
- C Thinking otherwise is one of the most common misunderstandings about the criterion.
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 “If what matters is not suffering, then painless killing is fine.”
Answer That's the misunderstanding the chapter corrects. Sentience tells us who can be harmed; death harms those who feel by taking away the good that was coming.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 16 of the PDF edition · English translation
is the capacity to have experiences. It is what distinguishes individuals from things: sentient beings are someone; nonsentient things are something. That is, sentient beings are not mere living bodies: they are individuals who can be positively or negatively affected. In the case of sentient beings, there is someone "inhabiting" those bodies.
To give to someone is to avoid harming them and to seek to benefit them. The criterion of sentience holds that we should give moral consideration to all beings capable of having experiences (that is, to all sentient beings).
It is sometimes said that, if the criterion of sentience were correct, then all moral questions would be solved by the use of analgesia and anesthesia. Given that there are ways for someone to be harmed without suffering (for example, by death12, even without suffering; or by winning a prize and not being told about it), it is sometimes claimed that there must be something wrong with the criterion of sentience. This objection then concludes that, in order to oppose painless killing and other harms that do not cause suffering, we must reject the criterion of sentience and postulate that biological life has .
The mistake in this argument is to presuppose that considering sentient beings implies only a concern with avoiding their suffering, which is false. As we saw in chapter 1, a sentient being is harmed by the presence of what is harmful to them and also by the absence of what is beneficial to them. The two examples the objection offers (the and the harm of someone not being told they have won a prize) are recognized by the criterion of sentience. Indeed, the most obvious way of explaining the harm in these cases is in terms of sentience: they are harms consisting in the absence of (all or some) positive experiences.
To explain the harm of death and the harm someone suffers by not being told they have won a prize, it is necessary to imagine what the individual would experience in each situation (staying alive versus dying, and being told about the prize versus not being told) and to evaluate in which of them they would be better off. Thus the objection, without realizing it, assumes the criterion of sentience.
Therefore, it is false that the criterion of sentience would not recognize the existence of harms that do not involve suffering. Thinking that it would not is perhaps one of the most common misconceptions about the criterion of sentience, and one of the reasons why some people have rejected it. Avoiding suffering is an extremely important part of consideration for sentient beings, but it is not the only concern.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
Thinking that the sentience criterion is concerned only with suffering is...
Death harms a sentient being mainly through...
Food for thought
What other harms, besides pain, can you imagine for an animal?
Author’s notes 1
- 12 For an analysis of the harm of death for nonhuman animals, see the third volume of this collection. See also (2007, p. 537-778; 2010c) and (2022a, p. 61-92) ↩
Sources cited in this text 3
The full list for the volume is in the Volume VI references.
- CUNHA, L. C. Razões para ajudar: o sofrimento dos animais selvagens e suas implicações éticas. Curitiba: Appris, 2022a.
- HORTA, O. Igualitarismo, igualación a la baja, antropocentrismo y valor de la vida. Revista de Filosofía da Universidad Complutense de Madrid, v. 35, n. 1, p. 133-152, 2010c.
- HORTA, O. Un desafío para la bioética: la cuestión del especismo. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia). Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2007.
This chapter in Volume XII
How the author sums up this debate in The Essentials of Animal Ethics.
There are harms that do not necessarily cause suffering, such as the harm of death. Hence, the sentience criterion is wrong. (VI, ch. 4).
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