Volume VI · To Whom Do We Owe Moral Consideration? · chapter 7
Does accepting the criterion of sentience imply assuming that values are subjective?
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
Accepting the sentience criterion doesn't imply that values are subjective: there's a confusion between “subjective” in the sense of referring to consciousness and in the sense of there being no objective truth.
“Subjective” can mean two things: “it happens inside someone's head” or “it's just opinion.” Pain happens inside someone, but it isn't just opinion that pain is bad.
The temperature you feel is “yours,” but the thermometer measures something real. Something happening in a consciousness doesn't make it mere opinion.
- P1 The objection says that by valuing beings with subjectivity, the criterion assumes values are subjective.
- P2 “Subjective” can mean “relating to consciousness” or “without objective truth.”
- P3 One doesn't imply the other: suffering can have objective disvalue even though it's a conscious experience.
- C Therefore, the criterion doesn't imply that values are subjective.
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 value lies in experiences, then everything is relative.”
Answer Value involving experiences doesn't make it opinion. One can hold that suffering is objectively bad, and that sentient beings merely recognize it.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 23 of the PDF edition · English translation
Sentience-centered ethics holds that, for a situation to be good/bad, better/worse, there must be one or more individuals who are harmed or benefited in that situation. The criterion of holds that the beings for whom things can go better or worse are sentient beings, that is, beings who have a subjectivity, since they are capable of experiences that can be positive or negative, can have their preferences satisfied or frustrated, and so on.
Let us now consider an objection to the criterion of sentience. This objection says that we should reject it because, if we accept that, for a situation to be better or worse, there must exist beings with subjectivity (as is assumed in sentience-centered ethics), then we will be assuming a subjective conception of value (that is, assuming that there is nothing that everyone should recognize as objectively good or bad, regardless of what they prefer).
However, the one does not necessarily imply the other. What every sentience-centered conception of value assumes is that, for there to be value/disvalue in the world, there must exist beings capable of being positively or negatively affected. This is compatible with claiming that there are things that everyone should recognize as good or bad.
For example, it could be said that happiness objectively has and that suffering objectively has intrinsic disvalue. According to this conception, sentient beings merely recognize what has value or disvalue: it is not they who create value or disvalue. It could be said, for example, that it is not sentient beings who "invent" the idea that suffering is bad and that pleasure is good. The value of pleasure and the disvalue of suffering come from their intrinsic characteristics.
Holding that there are things that are objectively good/bad in themselves does not imply having to say that things that are not experiences (such as species, ecosystems, or merely biological life without sentience) have intrinsic value. Holding that there are things that are objectively good or bad in themselves is compatible with claiming that, for there to be value or disvalue, there must be beings for whom things can be positive or negative.
In short, the objection in question confuses two senses of the term "subjective". Something can be subjective in the sense of referring to consciousness. Something can be subjective in the sense that there is no objective truth about it. However, as we have seen, the one does not necessarily imply the other.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
What confusion does the chapter point out?
Is it possible to say that happiness has objective value and suffering objective disvalue?
Food for thought
Do you think your pain is bad only because you think it's bad?
This chapter in Volume XII
How the author sums up this debate in The Essentials of Animal Ethics.
The sentience criterion values only beings that have a subjectivity. So it assumes that values are subjective (that is, that there is no right/wrong about values). (VI, ch. 7).
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