I figured I’d write this to articulate a concern, or really more of a vague suspicion, that makes me nervous whenever I read anything about Wild Animal Suffering. This is going to seem like I’m being really uncharitable, but I’ll say it anyway in case other people feel similarly.
Whenever anyone talks about how we should look into this, because wild animals suffer a lot, I have this nagging feeling that they’re going to do rigorous research for a few decades, then conclude that the majority of animals on Earth would be better off dead. At this point they’ll presumably recommend that we start purging the world of animal life, and to me that sounds like a bad thing, regardless of how convincing the research is.
As far as I’m aware, nobody is saying this, but the almost non-existent state of the current research allows me to fill in the gaps with whatever I think is most plausible. I assume the people interested in the field fill in the blanks differently to me, and it’s unlikely that a large body of research will exactly match my totally uninformed worst expectations.
The problem is that it’s pretty easy to measure suffering, but it’s probably impossible to determine what makes an animal’s life worth living. With that in mind, I assume that research into Wild Animal Suffering will adopt a negative utilitarian approach, and negative utilitarianism scares me because I don’t think it regards life as inherently worth living.
Why Research into Wild Animal Suffering Concerns me
I figured I’d write this to articulate a concern, or really more of a vague suspicion, that makes me nervous whenever I read anything about Wild Animal Suffering. This is going to seem like I’m being really uncharitable, but I’ll say it anyway in case other people feel similarly.
Whenever anyone talks about how we should look into this, because wild animals suffer a lot, I have this nagging feeling that they’re going to do rigorous research for a few decades, then conclude that the majority of animals on Earth would be better off dead. At this point they’ll presumably recommend that we start purging the world of animal life, and to me that sounds like a bad thing, regardless of how convincing the research is.
As far as I’m aware, nobody is saying this, but the almost non-existent state of the current research allows me to fill in the gaps with whatever I think is most plausible. I assume the people interested in the field fill in the blanks differently to me, and it’s unlikely that a large body of research will exactly match my totally uninformed worst expectations.
The problem is that it’s pretty easy to measure suffering, but it’s probably impossible to determine what makes an animal’s life worth living. With that in mind, I assume that research into Wild Animal Suffering will adopt a negative utilitarian approach, and negative utilitarianism scares me because I don’t think it regards life as inherently worth living.
Of course, maybe it isn’t?
I’d rather not find out.