Non-Sentient Creatures Do Not Have Intrinsic Moral Value

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I. Introduction

 

My claim is that leading arguments in contemporary literature do not sufficiently demonstrate that non-sentient creatures have intrinsic moral value. I will call these arguments “functionalist arguments for non-sentience conativity.” These functionalist arguments maintain that non-sentient creatures still have conative states, and that conative states are value generating. Conative states are dispositions like interest, desire, intention, etc. My criticism is that:

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 a) there are no non-sentient conative states, i.e., functionalism is wrong about conative states; and
 
b) conative states are not value generating.

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The point of (b) is that, even if you reject (a), these so-called “non-sentient desires” still would not be value generating, and therefore they are not a sufficient route to accord non-sentient creatures with intrinsic moral value. I do not mean to say, however, that non-sentient creatures have no value at all. Rather, I will suggest a basis for the instrumental moral value of non-sentient creatures based on their interdependence with sentient-creatures.

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My argument is founded on Bentham’s utilitarianism, notably the claim: “the question is not, can they reason? Nor can they talk? but, can they suffer?” (Bentham 311). This is not a violent claim and has been proven retroactively by the fact that you have no worry about turning off ChatGPT, but accidentally hurting your pet feels horrible. I also argue that, by definition, creatures that do not have any phenomenal experience, any “sense-data,” are not capable of suffering. You have to feel pain to suffer, and if you cannot feel, you cannot feel pain.

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There are many asentientist arguments in the literature which attempt to locate moral value in elsewhere than sentience. Asentientist arguments for moral value use “conative states,” to generate moral patients; yet conatitivity, however, implies sentience. Therein lies the contradiction. A non-conscious animal does not walk left instead of right because it wants to do so, any more than a sunflower faces the sun because it feels like it. Saying non-conscious creatures, or any sort of object without sub-jectivity, have desires, wants, interests, etc., is nothing more than metaphor or cheap anthropocentrism.

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To accommodate the broadness of definitions of animal sen-tience and simplify matters for this paper, I will equate animal sentience and animal consciousness, and I will take both to incorporate any normal view about sentience except for panpsychism. Furthermore, by “non-sentience,” I mean to describe the negation of the common conditions of sentience popular in the literature. This includes the negation of any higher order¹ or first-order theories of sentience, the negation of “what-it-is-to-be-likeness” or there being a “subjective character of experience” (Nagel 436), and the negation of any “affective sentience,” or the capacity for “balanced experiences” (Browning and Birch). 

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When I am talking about a non-conscious creature, I am referring to creatures for whom non-consciousness is essential to that creature’s nature. My arguments do not apply to people in comas or Sleeping Beauty. I am not a scientist, but my understanding of biology suggests that creatures without any nervous system are probably good candidates for those which have absolutely no possibility of pain. Animals that do not have central nervous systems, and therefore are probably not sentient, include sea sponges, sea cucumbers, starfish, and jellyfish.

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II. Classical Arguments for the Value of Sentience

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Since Bentham’s famous dictum written above, the foundation of animal rights philosophy has been based on sentience. This thinking was revived by Peter Singer, who used utilitarian arguments to kickstart the animal rights revolution. For Singer and many others, suffering is the principal condition. Suffering is intrinsically bad, and it presupposes that a creature has interests. A dog has an interest to not be kicked, because it would feel pain; a jellyfish does not have this interest, because it does not feel: “The limit of sentience... is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others" (Singer 50).

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In fact, many theories of animal ethics—beyond utilitarianism—are based on sentience in this way. The canonical theological account of animal rights depends upon phenomenal consciousness. In 1976, Andrew Linzey argued that the ability to experience suffering and harm is the sufficient condition for possessing rights, rather than older conceptions of “rationality” or “intelligence” (Cahill 73). Even deep ecologists, who tend to be holistic in their evaluation of the environment, depend on phenomenal consciousness to justify moral consideration: “What is needed, more than anything else, is to relieve intense pain and prolonged felt suffering” (Næss 191). Kantians (including the man himself) like Korsgaard do not consider pain and pleasure to be primary, yet they maintain that sentience is needed for moral consideration. Sentience is necessary for second-order judgments, which allow the moral agent to “legislate” their will; if a will is legislative, it is necessarily placed under moral consideration. Martha Nussbaum, who defends a “capabilities approach” to animal ethics, seems immune from considerations of sentience (as the exercise of certain capabilities, like size, does not require sentience.) But she seems to be taking only sentient creatures into consideration. “No sentient animal should be cut off from the chance for a flourishing life” (Nussbaum 351). Moreover, animal sentience is the key driver of government legislation. For example, the UK’s animal welfare act 2006 requires that a creature is capable of experiencing suffering to be protected (2006, s1 (4)). The EU Lisbon treaty states that member states must, “since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals” (Article 13, Title 2). Finally, even arguments _against_ animal welfare usually depend upon their non-sentience, going back to Descartes’s animal machines, whose screams of pain are more like coded software responses than genuine reactions to stimulus.

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The point is that, intuitively, it is hard to say that harm is done to something that does not feel harm. Breaking the legs off a table is only metaphorically harming it. The table feels no harm, because it cannot feel. The same applies to non-sentient creatures. Moreover, even if these non-sentient conative states are possible, they are not value generating; just because I want something does not mean somebody ought to give it to me. Desire is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for obligations. This does not mean we ought to kill all or completely disregard non-sentient creatures or non-sentient objects in general. Non-sentient things, objects, make up the home and habitat of sentient creatures, subjects. Burning down a forest, although no harm is done to the mountain it sits on, does much harm to the probably billions of creatures who have their home there and those who are burned in the process.

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I will now consider the main arguments in the literature which support moral considerations for non-sentient creatures. Unlike the arguments we have discussed thus far, these arguments are not based on sentience but instead depend on conative states being functional—that a creature can want something while having no mental state at all. What designates conative states for the functionalists is doing x rather than y, showing (retroactively) that the animal wanted, desired, or intended x. I do not think such conative states can manifest non-mentally. But when this is the case (i.e., if they are functional), their mental quality has to be included in the constellation of functional manifestations of those conative states. Therefore, consciousness is a prerequisite for conative states—without consciousness, a creature wants to eat as much as heavy clouds want to rain. Just because it does does not mean it wills.

 

III. Arguments for Non-Sentient Moral Consideration

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There has recently been an increase in literature concerning the moral consideration of non-sentient creatures (cf. Dawkins; Kammerer; Levy; Carruthers; Birch). Arguments for moral consideration are varied, depending on the background of the philosopher, biologist, neuroscientist, etc. Nevertheless, these arguments have one thing in common. They posit that non-sentient creatures can still have conative states (“desires” or “interests”) because these states are functional, and they generate moral value. 

Functionalism about mental states holds that mental states need not only be understood by, or exist in, their mental qualities, i.e., their existing in the mind. Chemical processes in the brain, or the actions of the body, are, for functionalists, equivalent to those mental states. For example, “anger” is not just the feeling of being angry; it is also the input of norepinephrine and adrenaline, as well as the action of lashing out, or acting irrationally. Philosophers who claim that non-sentient creatures can still have conative states are functionalists about desires. Conative states are not simply the phenomenological feel of “want”; they are identified by the animal’s making certain choices over others. This is not my position. I do accept that we can describe the accompanying chemical and physical manifestations of an emotion as important signifiers of that emotion, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions of the emotion. The mental state, on the other hand, although it usually accompanies other manifestations, is a necessary and sufficient condition of the emotion.

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For example, Kammerer maintains that phenomenal consciousness itself is not “normatively significant”, and therefore we should consider what “ethics without sentience” might look like.² Kammerer asserts that “[w]hen an animal undergoes pain, this is bad, not because of the way pain phenomenally feels, but because, at least in standard cases, the animal wants it to stop—sometimes very intensely—and this desire is frustrated” (15). For Kammerer, the conative state, “desire”, is not phenomenal. Because Kammerer is a functionalist, he holds that conative mental states, like “desires” and “wants,” can be identified by the creature’s actions that are commonly associated with pain, and thus phenomenal consciousness is not necessary for moral consideration.

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Dawkins develops a similar point regarding animal welfare. For Dawkins, animal welfare can be defined “objectively” by talking about what animals “want” without considering phenomenal states like pain.³ Through experimentation, “[a]n indication of what animals want over a longer time scale can be ascertained by seeing how they respond to repeated exposure to something” (5). For example, you can discover whether cows prefer being fed inside or outside, by letting them experience both, and then seeing which they choose. One might object that a “preference” at all requires some sort of phenomenal consciousness, but this is not so for the functionalist. For Dawkins and other functionalists about desire, the cows can value whatever they choose because they chose it, not just because they feel an affinity toward an option. For the functionalist, conative states can be under-stood through actions without depending on there being a phenomenal state. To summarize, the argument goes as follows:

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(P1) If desires can be non-mental, non-sentient creatures can have conative states.

(P2) Conative states can be non-mental.

(C1) Non-sentient creatures can have conative states.

(P3) If non-sentient creatures can have conative states and having conative states warrants moral consideration, non-sentient creatures are worthy of moral consideration.

(P4) Having conative states is sufficient to warrant moral consideration.

(C2) Non-sentient creatures are worthy of moral consideration.⁴

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My problems with the above sort of argument are with (P2) and (P4). Having exclusively non-mental conative states is impossible, and conativity is not a sufficient path to moral consideration.

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A. Non-Conscious Desires Are Not Possible

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In this section, I will show that (P2) is false. (P2) is false because corresponding physical effects of mental states are not themselves equivalent to mental states. Conative states, therefore, cannot be non-mental. I will also address a potential objection from “subconscious” conative states—an example of non-conscious conativity—and show why it is confused. 

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If I throw a chair against a wall and have norepinephrine and adrenaline coursing through my veins, when someone asks, “What’s wrong?” a proper explanation is not: “I’ve thrown a chair against a wall, my senses are heightened, and my heart rate has increased.” Those effects are merely symptoms of my feeling angry. A proper explanation would be: “Because I’m angry!” I could even say “I lost a pub quiz!” which would explain why I feel angry. Even if physiological processes begin before I am aware of my mental state, the mental state is still a necessary feature. 

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A creature may show desires through its actions, but a desire can only manifest as actions if it is firstly or simultaneously felt. It is important to note that Dawkins uses cows and rats as examples of creatures whose welfare can be measured objectively. Both of these animals are sentient. Their conative states manifest in action because they depend upon a reaction to phenomenal states. Non-sentient creatures can never have the phenomenal feel of a desire. They cannot know that a pain source is painful because they do not experience pain. They can therefore never “want” to move away from it. It is impossible to grant non-sentient creatures moral consideration on the grounds of having non-conscious desires because having “non-conscious desires” is impossible. If you maintain that non-sentient creatures can have conative states, what stops a rock from having desires to fall to the floor? Or the waves having desires to crash at the height of their crests?

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A possible objection to this argument is to point out that humans have non-conscious or subconscious desires all the time. These subconscious desires sometimes manifest themselves in our actions without our knowledge of their genesis: We are completely unconscious of their existence and yet they are extremely powerful. After all, all actions are in some sense a manifestation of a desire, and these desires almost never have to be conscious to be actualized. I do not need to have read Freud to know that when I walk, I just put one foot in front of the other: I do not have to consciously acknowledge my subconscious desire to walk to do so. Maybe non-sentient creatures desire non-consciously through this sort of mechanism, akin to Schopenhauer’s “will to life” (or the “force” in Star Wars).⁵

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It may make sense to say that humans have “non-conscious” or “sub-conscious” desires which can move us toward action in various ways. However, it does not seem to make much sense to accord genuine conativity to a creature which is, by its nature, incapable of consciously experiencing the phenomenal “feel” of any desires at all. I may not know that I am acting based on a subconscious desire, but I certainly am aware when that desire is thwarted. If I trip over whilst walking, the unfulfilled desire suddenly becomes manifest. This is not the case for a creature that could never experience desire, or the feeling of its unfulfillment. Even if you insist that this is begging the question, and you think of desire as wholly non-sentient, you must explain why the sunflower that turns to face the sun is not desiring. Or why do machines not have desires?⁶ Of course if someone does maintain this claim, that conativity applies to non-mental qualities because of a sort of “life-force,” then non-conscious conative states are possible for them.

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(P1) then, unless you are a Jedi, is simply not the case. Desires can indeed be functional, but not if a functional explanation neglects the necessary mental feature of conative states. Sentience is a necessary condition of conative states. By attributing functionalism to desires, Kammerer and others aimed to show that non-conscious creatures are capable of desire. However, non-conscious conative states are im-possible mental states, so non-conscious creatures cannot be capable of conative states. 

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B. Conativity Alone is Not a Sufficient Path to Moral Consideration

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In this section I will show that (P4) is false. Conative states alone are not sufficient moral properties that grant moral consideration to the fulfillment of the want or the wanting creature. I have just shown that non-conscious conative states are not possible. For the following section I will assume that they are,⁷ in order to show that even if they did exist, they would not be sufficient to grant moral consideration to the desiring creatures. This way, if you are really stubborn and do not agree with A, hopefully I can still convert you.

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Firstly, if non-conscious desires are possible, then their frustration does not feel bad, and their fulfillment does not feel good; hence, non-conscious desires cannot be justified through utilitarian means. A hypothetical “desire consequentialist” could say that the satisfaction of desires is an end in itself, but I do not find this claim satisfactory at all. Desires can only be judged by what their end is—by what they desire. There is a significant moral difference between a desire to end world hunger and a desire to begin world starvation. Desire, as a moral principle, is not justifiable deontologically. Usually, the ethical legitimacy of desire is measured by their closeness to what is “actually good.”⁸ If a young toddler desires a snack before dinner, the parent will often decline, because filling up on unhealthy food and not consuming a balanced diet is not “good” for the child. Laws and the consequences of breaking them serve to align desires with what is deemed good in the given society. In many religious systems, desires are antithetical to what is considered “good.” Desires are not naturally aligned to common conceptions of goodness; it is therefore quite unusual to naturally grant them as being sufficient to guarantee moral consideration.

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An anti-humanist might respond to an argument comparing humans and animals to parents and children by highlighting its overly paternal anthropocentrism. Who are we, a wholly different species, to decide which animal desires are right and wrong? Critical animal theorists (CAT) will maintain that it is intensely speciesist to insist on human exceptionalism when it comes to moral consideration, and desires across species should be taken into account equally.⁹

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This would be a more powerful criticism if my argument identified an arbitrary dividing line between humans and other species—but this is not the case. CAT cannot defend the desires of non-sentient creatures because if the phenomenal aspect of the desire is lacking, there is nothing to defend. When I throw my chair at the wall, I give an excuse that I am angry: “I could not control myself... I saw red,” and depending on my age, this might work. But if I just throw a chair at a wall and reveal that there was no corresponding emotion, there is no viable defense. Sentientism does not posit an arbitrary dividing line like speciesism does. Rather, it highlights an important metaphysical¹⁰ dividing line which changes moral consideration.

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Considering the above criticisms, (P4) turns out to be very weak. Desires are not sufficient for moral consideration. To recap, non-conscious animals cannot have conative states, but even if they did have conative states, conative states are not by their nature value generating. Returning to our foundation of utilitarianism, we can make the claim that the unfulfillment of conative states is harmful in some way if they cause pain (the feeling of starvation, for example), but otherwise, there is no value generating basis of conativity on its own.

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IV. Instrumental Value of Non-Sentient Creatures

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I have so far argued that non-sentient creatures do not have intrinsic moral value. Based on their lack of conative states and conativity’s not being value generating, the reasons put forward in the literature for valuing non-sentient creatures do not stand up. It is important, however, to say the following: I do not mean to say that non-sentient creatures have no moral value. I think they do have value insofar as they are valuable for sentient creatures. What I mean to say is that we should afford value for the right reasons, and the right reasons are not the innate value of conative states when such creatures do not even have them. The right reason not to start a sea cucumber farm, for example, is not because the organized slaughter of sea cucumbers is bad in the same way that it is for sentient creatures, because it is not. Chickens feel pain, therefore an endless slaughter of them is indefensible, but that of sea cucumbers is not, because it would be as morally insignificant as a wheat harvest.

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Again, that is not to say that sea cucumber or wheat harvests are always harmless—they can include the destruction of a habitat which houses many sentient creatures. My point is merely that they are not intrinsically harmful. Contemporary animal ethicists, trying to justify moral consideration for non-sentient creatures, bend over backwards to find desires which can guarantee innate value to these animals. This is impossible, and even if it was, these desires do not guarantee moral consideration. It is not speciesist to say that non-sentient creatures can only be afforded moral consideration instrumentally.

Climate change is no tragedy for the Earth, which has shed itself of the life that inhabits it many times before; our planet does not care whether it is too hot or too cold. The child who is starving because of drought, and the family whose home is slowly sinking into the sea—they care, and they are the ones who deserve moral consideration. If the continued existence of non-sentient creatures has any bearing on the well-being of sentient ones (the food chain, having balanced ecosystems, etc.), then this instrumental value guarantees them moral consideration. This essay establishes the right reasons for non-sentient moral consideration, without grasping for reasons that are not there, as are done by contemporary animal ethicists, who try to locate moral consideration in conative states that the creatures do not even have.