If sentience is what matters, why are there harms that do not affect experiences?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 18 of the PDF edition · English translation

As we have seen, to give moral consideration 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 (and only) beings capable of having experiences. At the basis of the criterion of sentience is the idea that, for there to be harm and benefit, there must be someone who would be harmed or benefited, and what makes a being someone (and not merely something) is the capacity to have experiences. A shoe and a chair are something, because they are not sentient. I, you, a fish, a pig, and a shrimp, for example, are someone, because we are capable of having experiences, which is what gives us a first-person perspective (that is, we are not mere empty bodies: in our case there is someone inhabiting them).

An objection sometimes raised against the criterion of sentience involves pointing out that there are ways of harming someone that do not affect their experiences. Suppose, for example, that someone is raped while unconscious and, on waking up, will never know about the abuse they suffered. Suppose also that this abuse will not cause any later negative experience, nor reduce the amount of positive experiences the victim would have from then on. That is, in this case the abuse did not alter the amount of negative and positive experiences the victim would have. Cases of this kind are sometimes mentioned as an objection to the criterion of sentience.

These cases pose an objection to the view that all forms of harm affect experiences in some way. But are they also an objection to the criterion of sentience? One might think that accepting the criterion of sentience implies having to accept that all forms of harm affect experiences (by producing negative experiences and/or preventing positive experiences). However, although the two are compatible, accepting the former does not necessarily imply accepting the latter. The criterion of sentience says only which beings we should consider: it does not say in what ways these beings can be harmed and benefited. In the example of someone who is raped while unconscious, this is still a harm to a sentient being (if it were, for example, an inanimate object, there would be no harm at all).

Such a harm could be explained, for example, as a failure to respect the preferences of the being in question (their actual preferences or the preferences they would have if they had the relevant information¹³). A preference is also something that depends on sentience in order to exist.

To better understand this point, it is important to draw the following distinction. One thing is the debate about what the criterion for moral consideration should be, that is, the criterion that says which kinds of entities we should consider morally. The criterion of sentience is a criterion of this kind. Another thing is the debate about the ways in which sentient beings can be harmed and benefited. This second debate takes place among theories of well-being¹⁴.

In other words, those who accept the criterion of sentience can recognize that sentient beings are harmed by negative experiences and by being prevented from having positive experiences. However, they need not claim that these are the only ways in which sentient beings can be harmed (although that view is also compatible with it).

In short, pointing to the possibility of harms that would not alter the amount of positive and negative experiences may be an objection to the hedonistic theory of well-being (since this theory claims that, for a sentient being to be benefited/harmed, there must be some change in the amount of positive/negative experiences they would have). However, as we have seen, this does not constitute an objection to the criterion of sentience, since, being a criterion for moral consideration, it need not commit itself to any specific theory of well-being. These are two different debates.