the revealed preference of living things is nearly always to live
That’s because almost no living things have the ability to conceive of, or execute on, alternative options.
Consider a hypothetical squirrel whose life is definitely not worth living (say, they are subjected to torture daily). Would you expect this squirrel to commit suicide?
I don’t know—it’s a good question! It probably depends on the suicide method available. I think if you give the squirrel some dangerous option to escape the torture, like “swim across this lake” or “run past a predator”, it’d probably try to take it, even with a low chance of success and high chance of death. I’m not sure, though.
You do see distressed animals engaging in self-destructive behavior, like birds plucking out their own feathers. (Birds in the wild tend not to do this, hence presumably they are not sufficiently distressed.)
Yeah, I agree that many animals can & will make tradeoffs where there’s a chance of death, even a high chance (though I’m not confident they’d be aware that what they’re doing is taking on some chance of death — I’m not sure many animals have a mental concept of death similar to ours. Some might, but it’s definitely not a given.).
I also agree that animals engage in self-destructive behaviours, e.g. feather pulling, chewing/biting, pacing, refusing food when sick, eating things that are bad for them, excessive licking at wounds, pulling on limbs when stuck, etc etc.
I’m just not sure that any of them are undertaken with the purpose/intent to end their own life, even when they have that effect. That’s because I’d guess that it’s kind of hard to understand “I’d be better off dead” because you need to have a concept of death, and not being conscious, plus the ability to reason causally from taking a particular action to your eventual death.
To be clear, I’ve not done any research here on animal suicide & concepts of death, & I’m not all that confident, but I overall think the lack of mass animal suicides is at best extremely weak evidence that animal lives are mostly worth living.
That’s because almost no living things have the ability to conceive of, or execute on, alternative options.
Consider a hypothetical squirrel whose life is definitely not worth living (say, they are subjected to torture daily). Would you expect this squirrel to commit suicide?
I don’t know—it’s a good question! It probably depends on the suicide method available. I think if you give the squirrel some dangerous option to escape the torture, like “swim across this lake” or “run past a predator”, it’d probably try to take it, even with a low chance of success and high chance of death. I’m not sure, though.
You do see distressed animals engaging in self-destructive behavior, like birds plucking out their own feathers. (Birds in the wild tend not to do this, hence presumably they are not sufficiently distressed.)
Yeah, I agree that many animals can & will make tradeoffs where there’s a chance of death, even a high chance (though I’m not confident they’d be aware that what they’re doing is taking on some chance of death — I’m not sure many animals have a mental concept of death similar to ours. Some might, but it’s definitely not a given.).
I also agree that animals engage in self-destructive behaviours, e.g. feather pulling, chewing/biting, pacing, refusing food when sick, eating things that are bad for them, excessive licking at wounds, pulling on limbs when stuck, etc etc.
I’m just not sure that any of them are undertaken with the purpose/intent to end their own life, even when they have that effect. That’s because I’d guess that it’s kind of hard to understand “I’d be better off dead” because you need to have a concept of death, and not being conscious, plus the ability to reason causally from taking a particular action to your eventual death.
To be clear, I’ve not done any research here on animal suicide & concepts of death, & I’m not all that confident, but I overall think the lack of mass animal suicides is at best extremely weak evidence that animal lives are mostly worth living.