Can Nonsentient Living Beings Be Harmed?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 49 of the PDF edition · English translation

Biocentrism is the view that everything that is alive should receive direct moral consideration. Proponents of biocentrism⁶⁰ agree that it only makes sense to give moral consideration to beings that can be harmed and benefited. However, they disagree that sentience is necessary for there to be a possibility of harm or benefit. Instead, they argue that nonsentient living beings (such as plants and fungi, for example) can also be harmed and/or benefited.

Biocentrists claim that everything that is alive has a good of its own, as evidenced by the fact that it flourishes in some circumstances and perishes in others. For example, according to this view, the fact that a plant grows when watered is a sign that the plant values water. Note that biocentrists are not saying that the plant is sentient and has a preference for being watered (they acknowledge that the plant is not sentient). What they are claiming is that, for there to be valuing, there need not be someone inhabiting that body.

However, from the fact that something flourishes under certain conditions and not under others, it does not follow that it matters to that something whether it is in this or that state, and therefore that it is harmed or benefited by being in certain circumstances rather than others. If the organism in question does not experience certain states as positive and/or others as negative, it is hard to conceive how it could value being in this or that condition. There is no one there to experience anything: it is a living body, but an empty one, inhabited by no one. These are lives that no one lives. Thus, one possible criticism of the biocentric argument is to accuse it of leaping from a metaphorical sense to a literal sense of the term “value”⁶¹. We will look at this in more detail below.

The biocentric criterion is sometimes defended by appealing to ordinary language. In ordinary language, we use terms that refer to a supposed well-being of nonsentient entities. For example, the following expressions are often used:

“the plant likes water”; “that was good for the species”; “nature wants ecological balance,” “the fungus wants moisture,” etc.

However, ordinary language can be highly misleading. When we say “the plant ‘likes’ water,” or “the fungus ‘wants’ moisture” (or any of the other examples above), we are using these terms in a metaphorical sense. If we claim that this shows that nonsentient entities have a good of their own, there is then a leap from a metaphorical sense to a literal sense of the terms “likes,” “was good,” and “wants.” It is like saying (metaphorically) “the car wants gasoline,” “that song is sad,” “the sea is angry,” and then concluding (literally) that the car, the song, and the sea have a first-person perspective, with a will and a good of their own.

It is hard to conceive how an organism could value certain states over others without being able to experience certain states as positive and/or others as negative – especially when it is unable to experience any state at all, not even neutral states. This gives us reason to think that the adequate criterion for moral consideration is sentience, and not merely biological life.