"Animals don't know they're going to die, so killing them is fine"

Como pode aparecer

The strongest version

Strongest version (steelman):

1. P1Death is only bad for those who fear it or who have plans it cuts short.
2. P2Animals don't know they're going to die, so they don't suffer in anticipation.
3. P3Animals don't plan for the future or have self-awareness over time, so they have no projects that death frustrates.
4. CSo killing them does them no harm, as long as there's no pain.

P2 has some truth to it: most animals probably don't have a concept of their own death as we do. P3 is exaggerated, as studies of animal cognition show. The central problem lies in P1.

The argument is valid. Its soundness fails at P1, which no one accepts when the victim is human, and at P3, which underestimates what many animals know of the future.

Full answer

1. a

   Reconstruction and diagnosis

   The argument mixes different ideas about why death would be bad:

   Idea	What it says	Problem
   Death is bad because of the fear it causes	Whoever doesn't know they'll die doesn't suffer	Confuses the suffering of anticipating death with the harm of death itself
   Death is bad because it frustrates plans	Whoever doesn't plan loses nothing	Ignores that one can lose a good future without having planned it
   Death is bad because of what it takes (deprivation)	Whoever dies loses the good experiences they would still have had	Applies to any being with a future of experiences, human or not

   The third idea is the most widely accepted in philosophy, since Thomas Nagel, and it's the only one that explains why killing someone in their sleep is wrong. It depends on neither knowing nor planning.

2. b

   Where the argument breaks

   1. The human test, with those who don't know.

   Babies have no idea what death is. People with advanced dementia or profound intellectual disabilities may have no notion of it and make no plans. By the argument, killing them painlessly would be acceptable. No one accepts that conclusion.

   2. The human test, with those who know but aren't thinking about it.

   An adult who's asleep generally knows they're mortal, but at that moment feels no fear and isn't planning anything. If they're killed in their sleep without waking, they don't suffer in anticipation. Even so, it's a very serious crime, because they lose everything they would still have lived. The same goes for someone killed by surprise, without noticing the danger.

   3. The harm of death isn't the fear of death.

   Fear of dying is an additional suffering, worth avoiding. But the absence of that fear doesn't eliminate the main harm: the loss of the future.

   4. Many animals anticipate the future.

   Western scrub-jays cache food with the next morning's hunger in mind. Chimpanzees and orangutans keep tools to use later. The idea that animals live in a pure present doesn't match what the studies show, even though we don't know whether any of them understands its own death.

   5. Fear doesn't require understanding death.

   Animals feel fear in the face of threats, and transport and slaughter are known sources of fear and stress. An animal may not know what dying is and still suffer at the moment it's taken to die.

   6. The perception of time may be different.

   There's evidence that smaller animals with faster metabolisms perceive visual changes at shorter intervals than we do. This suggests their experience of time may be denser, not poorer, than we imagine.

3. c

   Data and sources

   Source	What it says	Note
   Nagel, *Death* (1970)	Death is bad for the one who dies because of what it deprives them of, not because of what they feel	Noûs, 4(1)
   Raby et al., 2007	Western scrub-jays cache food anticipating the next day's hunger, without being hungry at the time	Nature, 445
   Osvath and Osvath, 2008	Chimpanzees and orangutans choose and keep tools for future use	Animal Cognition, 11
   EFSA, 2020, "Welfare of pigs at slaughter"	Identifies fear, pain and stress among the welfare consequences for pigs at the stages of slaughter	EFSA Journal, 18(6)
   Healy et al., 2013	Smaller animals with faster metabolisms perceive temporal information at a finer resolution	Animal Behaviour, 86(4)
   *A Journey Through Animal Ethics*, vol. III, ch. 10	Discusses the subjective perception of time and the harm of death	See also chs. 1, 2 and 4

4. d

   The strongest counter-reply: time-relative interests

   The most serious version comes from Jeff McMahan: the harm of death depends on how psychologically connected a being is to its own future, through memory, plans and self-awareness. Animals would have a weaker connection, and so would lose less by dying than an adult human.

5. e

   Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion

   Losing less isn't losing nothing.

   The counter-reply abandons the conclusion that "killing is fine" and starts discussing the size of the harm.

   The harm has to be weighed against the benefit.

   On the other side is a pleasure of taste (J11). Even a smaller harm weighs more.

   The same account would downgrade humans.

   Babies and people with advanced dementia also have a weak psychological connection to the future. Almost no one accepts that killing them is a small harm (A12, A16).

   Animals have a connection to the future.

   Memory, expectation and stable preferences exist in many species. The difference is one of degree.

Reasoning errors

Biases

Extrapolations

The principle being tested is: "whoever doesn't know they'll die, or isn't thinking about it, isn't harmed by being killed painlessly".

Contradictions

What the argument gets right

Connections

References