"Suffering and death are part of nature"

Como pode aparecer

The strongest version

Strongest version (steelman):

1. P1It only makes sense to speak of moral evil when there's a responsible agent.
2. P2In nature, suffering is caused by processes without intention: predation, disease, climate.
3. C1So natural suffering isn't a moral evil.
4. C2And what isn't a moral evil gives us no reason to act.

P1 and P2 are acceptable if we're talking about blame: a hurricane is guilty of nothing. The problem lies in C2, which jumps from the absence of a culprit to the absence of a victim.

The argument is invalid: from "no one is to blame" it doesn't follow that "no one was harmed".

Full answer

1. a

   Reconstruction and diagnosis

   The argument confuses two questions:

   Question	Depends on	Example
   Is anyone to blame?	There being an agent who chose	An arsonist is to blame; lightning isn't
   Was anyone harmed?	There being a victim who suffered	A forest burned by lightning has as many victims as one burned by an arsonist

   For the one who suffers, the origin of the suffering doesn't change what they feel.

2. b

   Where the argument breaks

   1. Neutral for whom?

   Nature has no intentions, but animals have experiences. The suffering of an animal eaten alive by parasites isn't neutral for it.

   2. Natural isn't a criterion of good.

   In the essay Nature, John Stuart Mill observed that nature does, every day, things for which a human being would be imprisoned or hanged. Copying nature was never a good moral guide (C1).

   3. We already intervene in the natural all the time.

   Vaccines, antibiotics, glasses, anaesthesia, shelter from the cold: much of civilization consists of reducing natural suffering.

   4. The human test.

   Faced with an epidemic or an earthquake, no one says "it's part of nature, let's not help". The absence of a culprit was never a reason to deny help to humans. Denying it to animals for the same reason is using a criterion we apply only to them.

   5. There's no agent, but there's someone who can help.

   Ethics asks not only who caused something, but also what we, who can act, ought to do.

3. c

   Data and sources

   Source	What it says	Note
   Mill, Nature (1874)	Nature kills, tortures and destroys all the time; imitating it isn't a moral criterion	Published in Three Essays on Religion
   Animal Ethics, "Why wild animal suffering matters"	Suffering matters to the one who suffers, whatever its cause
   *A Journey Through Animal Ethics*, vol. VII	Discusses whether natural suffering is neutral and whether nature's indifference releases us from helping	Chapters 13, 15 and 16

4. d

   The strongest counter-reply: suffering has a function

   The most serious version says pain is useful: it teaches animals to avoid danger, and natural selection depends on it. Ending natural suffering would destroy something that gives meaning to animals' lives.

5. e

   Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion

   Function isn't wellbeing.

   Pain serves the survival of genes, not the good of the individual. For the young animal that dies on its first day, it teaches nothing.

   We accept relieving pain that has a function.

   The pain of childbirth and of a fracture have functions, and we still use anaesthesia.

   No one proposes ending all pain at once.

   The serious proposal is to reduce avoidable suffering with research and caution (M5, M10).

Reasoning errors

Biases

Extrapolations

The principle being tested is: "suffering that's part of nature doesn't need to be relieved".

Contradictions

What the argument gets right

Connections

References