Volume VII · Ethics and the Situation of Wild Animals · chapter 15
If Nature Is Not Evil, Is Natural Suffering Neutral?
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
Natural suffering is not neutral just because nature is not evil or responsible: what gives us reasons to prevent it is how bad it is for the one who suffers, as in the case of a child who hurts someone without being to blame.
If a small child hits someone by accident, the child is not to blame, but the person gets hurt just the same. An animal's pain caused by nature hurts too, even with no one to blame.
A hurricane is not evil, and still we help its victims. Having no one to blame does not mean having no victims.
- P1 The objection says that, because it is natural, suffering is value-neutral.
- P2 What makes suffering bad is that it is bad for the one who suffers, not that someone is to blame.
- P3 Suffering caused by someone who is not responsible is still bad for the victim.
- C So we have reasons to prevent natural suffering, and all the more the greater it is.
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 “Nature is neither good nor evil, so natural suffering is not a problem.”
Answer Suffering is no less bad for the one who suffers because no one was to blame. Blame matters for judging agents, not for measuring the harm to victims.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 39 of the PDF edition · English translation
One objection to the proposal to help claims that, because the suffering in question is natural, it is neutral in terms of value (that is, it would not be something negative, as suffering caused by humans is), and that there are therefore no reasons to prevent it29.
Sometimes what gives rise to this idea is a confusion between what is relevant for someone to be held responsible and what is relevant for assessing whether a situation is negative. For example, it is sometimes said that “nature is neither good nor evil, it simply is, so we have no reasons to prevent natural suffering.” It is true that the term “nature” refers to a set of ongoing processes and not to a person, and so it makes no sense to hold these processes responsible. However, the fact that the source of the suffering cannot be held responsible does not make the suffering neutral in terms of value. This will be explained in more detail below.
A young child cannot be held responsible, but if she hits someone on the head with a club, the suffering is negative for the victim, and this gives us reasons to help that victim and to prevent it from happening again. The same is true of suffering resulting from . Nature is not a responsible agent when humans are the victims either. But this does not make such harms neutral, nor does it mean that we cease to have reasons to help these victims or to prevent natural suffering from occurring. This kind of view appears almost exclusively when nonhuman animals are the victims, given the overwhelming predominance of a speciesist view.
What makes suffering negative are its own characteristics. Suffering is the kind of experience whose central characteristic is being negative for the one who experiences it (if it is not experienced as negative, it is not suffering). And suffering is negative entirely independently of whether it originated in human practices or in natural processes. Therefore, it is false that natural suffering is neutral in terms of value. Suffering is a negative event, regardless of its origin.
What generates reasons to prevent suffering is its negative character. If so, then the greater the magnitude of the suffering, the stronger these reasons. We therefore have reasons to prevent natural suffering (since it remains negative for its victims), and these reasons are just as strong as those we have to prevent equivalent anthropogenic suffering.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
According to the chapter, what gives us reasons to prevent suffering?
What example does the chapter use?
Food for thought
Have you ever felt that some suffering "did not matter as much" just because no one was to blame?
Author’s notes 1
Sources cited in this text 2
The full list for the volume is in the Volume VII references.
- CUNHA, L. C. Razões para ajudar: o sofrimento dos animais selvagens e suas implicações éticas. Curitiba: Appris, 2022.
- SAPONTZIS, S. F. Morals, Reason and Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
This chapter in Volume XII
How the author sums up this debate in The Essentials of Animal Ethics.
We should not minimize natural harms because this question lies outside the scope of ethics, since neither natural processes nor animals are accountable. (VII, ch. 2, 15, 16).
Nature is neither good nor bad. Natural processes are not accountable agents. Therefore, we have no reasons to help. (VII, ch. 2, 15, 16).
Nature is indifferent to the suffering of animals. Ecosystems arise, endure, and disappear with complete indifference to the suffering and death of animals. (VII, ch. 2, 15, 16).
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