The necessity of sentience

Why is it claimed that sentience is a necessary prerequisite to have interests in a morally relevant way? It is common to claim that it is, but few have presented any arguments for it other than intuitions. This, in a way, is understandable. The belief that sentience is necessary in order to have interests is very basic and very intuitive. The lack of arguments has however been pointed out by ecocentrists,⁸⁴⁹ and led some of them to claim that the demand for sentience is either arbitrary,⁸⁵⁰ or biased by the fact that human beings typically are sentient.⁸⁵¹

There are, however, some philosophers who have supplied arguments for, or at least clues to, why sentience is necessary in order to have interests. Bennett Helm is one of them. He explains that “if someone were not affected emotionally by something no matter what happened to it, we would be hard pressed to say that it had import to her”.⁸⁵²

This looks reasonable. Being affected emotionally seems like something that has a close connection with having interests. At least human beings tend to be emotionally involved in the things we have interests in. A problem with the word ‘emotion’ is that it is used in different ways by different authors. Some authors see emotions just as phenomena with no necessary connection to positive or negative evaluations,⁸⁵³ while some use the word in a way that does not even imply sentience.⁸⁵⁴ Perhaps ‘feeling’ or ‘passion’ would be better suited for the idea that Helm wants to promote.

No matter which of these terms we use, the advocates of ecocentrism would no doubt respond that the connection between interests and the phenomena in question looks reasonable to humans because humans are beings who have their interests connected to emotions (or passions or feelings), but that this does not prove that interests have to be connected to emotions (passions/feelings). To base our claims on the human case is just bias.

Johnson states that:

Unlike the species, we human individuals are geared to feel about our interests, so it is hardly surprising that our interests are commonly tied to our feelings. Species however, our own included, are not organized in such a fashion.⁸⁵⁵

I believe, however, that Helm’s point should be interpreted on a principal level that would avoid both these problems. Emotions/feelings/passions are important because it can be claimed that to have an interest in something is to care about it. In order to be able to care about something one has to be sentient.

849 Callicott 1985 p.372 note 8, Callicott 1980 p.315 note 13, Nelson 1993 p.249, Rodman 1977 p.89

850 Callicott 1980 p.318 note 20, Nelson 1993 p.249, Rodman 1977 pp.90f

851 Callicott 1980 p.318 note 20, Rodman 1977 pp.91, 93f, Rolston 1988 p.190

852 Helm 2002 p.16

853 Broom 1998 pp.371, 373, Pugmire 1998 pp.3, 8, 11ff, Öhman 2006 p.33

854 See e.g. Öhman 2006 pp.39ff

855 Johnson 1991 p.161

Therefore sentience is a necessary prerequisite for having interests in a morally relevant way.⁸⁵⁶ Rick O’Neil for instance argues that

… there is no reason to consider x’s interests if x itself doesn’t care about those interests. Why bother about an interest if it never has and never will concern or matter to the holder of the interest?⁸⁵⁷

To argue that someone has an interest she does not care about even seems contradictory. To claim that we have an obligation to consider an interest that no one cares about looks like a misuse of ethics. We might ask: If a species does not care about what we do to it why should we care?

I can, in fact, imagine several answers to that question. All of these answers will, however be in terms of the instrumental value or end value of the species for sentient organisms who do care. None of the answers will be in terms of the value the species has for itself, that is, none of them will be based on a respect for interests had by the species itself.

The advocates of ecocentrism do not, in general, claim that species care about what happens to them. Instead, they claim either that this demand too is a bias that begs the question in favour of consciousness,⁸⁵⁸or that there are other ways to have interests that do not require caring – at least not in “the familiar sense of ‘care’” as Rolston puts it.⁸⁵⁹ According to Rolston, the demand for sentience is a bias that

takes a part for the whole … values a late product of the system, psychological life, and subordinates everything else to this. It mistakes a fruit for the whole plant, the last chapter for the whole story.⁸⁶⁰

The argument seems to be that sentience is not worthy of its special status, partly because it is a latecomer and partly because it is only one small aspect of the world and of the function of living entities. This argument seems to miss the point, however. The assumption that sentience is necessary in order to have interests is not a matter of assigning a special value to sentience. Whether sentience is worthy of any particular honour or fascination, or whether it has value as an end in itself is not what this discussion is about. Sentience is pointed out as a necessary prerequisite for having interests. Whether sentience is a good thing or not has nothing to do with this question. Even if we assume that sentience or being sentient is value neutral or even something bad, we still have to address the fact that by existing it gives those who possess it a point of view from which things are subjectively better or worse. The question is not whether

856 See e.g. Samuelsson 2008 p.95 for some examples of authors expressing this view.

857 O’Neil 1997 p.52

858 Plumwood 1991 p.147

859 Rolston 1999 p.124

860 Rolston 1987 p.271, Rolston 1988 p.190

this makes them more or less valuable but of whether it makes other things, events, etc. valuable for them.

Johnson seems to admit that caring in some form is important: “An interest (or good) must in some way make some sort of a difference to whatever being has the interest”.⁸⁶¹ Even so, he also believes that “it is question-begging to just assume that the being must be able to conceive of the interest (good) that makes the difference to it.”⁸⁶² He argues that animals can act so as to promote an interest even if they do not conceive of it as an interest. We humans can, for example, promote our happiness without having happiness as the aim of our actions.⁸⁶³

Johnson has a point in that, but the point is misdirected. It is quite clear that we can promote our happiness without having it as our aim. It also seems correct to say that one can have an interest without conceiving of it as an interest. The problem for Johnson is that these facts do not have any bearing on the question of whether it is possible to have an interest without caring about the thing (state, event, etc.) that we have an interest in. In order to answer that question with a negation we have to show something more, viz. that something can be in someone’s interest even if that someone does not have any subjective feelings for it. At least, this is how I interpret Helm’s call for emotions, and it seems to be a reasonable demand.

The question of subjectivity is important here. Both since it clearly requires sentience, and because it seems to be clearly required by interests. Mark Bernstein uses the term ‘subjective being’, and he defines subjective well-being in terms of phenomenology: “On a subjective account of well well-being, an individual’s doing well and doing poorly is constituted by the phenomenology that the individual experiences”.⁸⁶⁴

However, that there is something phenomenological going on inside is not enough to have well-being in a relevant sense according to Bernstein. It is also necessary to be able to feel good or bad, i.e. to have what Bernstein calls a

“hedonic dimension”.⁸⁶⁵ He also demands that the inner life of a moral patient is modifiable.⁸⁶⁶ I suppose that by the last claim he means modifiable from the outside. If it is not modifiable from the outside, there is nothing we can do to make the entity in question better or worse off, and we can therefore not have any moral duties on its account. I believe this is something that everyone involved in the debate would agree on.

The other two demands by Bernstein also seem very plausible. It looks reasonable indeed to claim that being in someone’s interest must have something to do with what is subjectively experienced as good by the possessor of the interest. To describe subjectivity in terms of phenomenological experiences

861 Johnson 1991 p.127

862 Johnson 1991 p.127

863 Johnson 1991 pp.127f

864 Bernstein 1998 p.39

865 Bernstein 1998 p.40

866 Bernstein 1998 p.40

seems intuitively reasonable, and to talk about a hedonic dimension seems to fit with Helms demand for emotions.

Joseph Levine’s reasoning about consciousness seems to go roughly along the same lines. He explains the subjectivity of consciousness as meaning that there is something it is like to have conscious experiences while there is nothing it is like to be in an unconscious state.⁸⁶⁷ I believe that this is a very important clue to the special status of consciousness. If something happens to a conscious experiencer there is something it is like for that individual to be subjected to the event in question. There is nothing it is like for a non-conscious entity to be subjected to anything. There is something it is like for me to be in pain. There is something it is like for you to be thirsty. There is, however, nothing it is like for a plant to be thirsty even though it reacts physiologically to that state, and there is nothing it is like for a species to be culled even if it affects its future evolution.

Dale Jamieson demands “a perspective from which their lives can go better or worse”,⁸⁶⁸ and Janna Thompson uses the having of a point of view as criteria for moral standing.⁸⁶⁹ I believe these suggestions are synonymous, and they seem to provide a good summary of the ideas we have seen above. To say that something is in your interest must reasonably imply that it is good from your perspective, or point of view. Talking about a perspective or a point of view in turn must reasonably imply subjectivity. It also seems to imply that there is valuation involved – subjective valuation. All of this, in turn, clearly implies consciousness.

Michael Nelson admits that species do not have a point of view,⁸⁷⁰ but he expresses doubt that the group of beings that have a point of view coincides with the group of beings that possess sentience, though he does not offer any argument for his doubt.⁸⁷¹ He also believes that if we use the having of a point of view as criteria for moral standing, many humans including “the profoundly senile, the very severely retarded, and newborn infants” would be excluded since they according to him, “obviously lack a point of view”.⁸⁷²

It seems to me that Nelson is putting too much and too little into the term.

Exactly how he defines ‘point of view’ is not clear but it does not seem to have much in common with the way we have talked about it above.

I believe the sense of the term according to which it includes all and only sentient beings, and at the same time answers the question why it is necessary in order to have interests can be best understood trough an analogy:

If someone breaks my computer we would say that the computer has been severely damaged. Maybe we would even say that it has been harmed (though this is much less obvious). We would probably also say that harm has been inflicted on me, since it affects me negatively if my computer is destroyed.

867 Levine 1997 p.379

868 Jamieson 1998 p.47. See also p.48. Jamieson uses the term ‘primary value’ as a synonym for moral standing.

869 Thompson 1990 p.159

870 Nelson 1993 p.253

871 Nelson 1993 p.249 note 10

872 Nelson 1993 p.252

There seems to be a relevant difference between my computer and me, however. That the computer is damaged or harmed is a judgement made by someone outside the computer. It is judged as a damage or a harm by me and maybe also by other human observers. It is, however, not judged by the computer to be a harm of the computer. The computer might have a program that checks it for malfunctions and if it is not totally dead, that program might still work. In that case, we might say that the computer notices the harm at least in some sense of ‘notice’. Maybe a sign turns up on the screen saying that something is wrong.

Even so, it is not the computer that judges the change that has happened to it as a harm or even as a malfunction. It “notices” a change and finds that the change fits with the criteria of harm that have been set by the human(s) who programmed the computer and therefore the program labels the changes as harms.

The effect on me that results from the damage of my computer might also be observed by other human beings. Different humans may have different opinions about whether what has happened to me (the loss of my computer) should be classified as a harm. Contrary to the computer, however I myself can also judge what has happened to me as a harm. The standard explanation for this difference between my computer and me is that I am a sentient being while the computer is not. This means that even if both my computer and I are harmed from an exterior perspective, only I am harmed from an interior perspective. The computer might break, it might stop working, or it might just change the way it works in a way that is judged by me as an impairment. It does not itself experience this as an impairment, however. It does not feel pain, agony or anger when it happens. It did not wish for it not to happen, and it was not afraid that it would happen – or to put it bluntly: It just does not care. It does not have any subjective feelings about it.

One might say that the computer is not a subjective I, or that it does not have its own perspective or point of view from which things can be felt as good or bad. A sentient being has a subjective viewpoint that the computer lacks and from which things are judged as good or bad. That is why I care about what happens to me – and to my computer – in a way that the computer does not.

Even if we were to assume that there is an objective way in which the computer is harmed, it does not help the case in question. As long as it is not subjectively harmed from the point of view of the computer, we do not seem to be able to talk about what has happened as something that frustrates an interest of the computer. As a result, any moral duties we might have concerning the computer cannot be duties to the computer, or more precisely to consider any interests of the computer. My subjective point of view thus seems to me to be the morally relevant difference between the computer and me.

Three phenomena that are used to be seen as closely connected with both sentience and interests are pain, experiences and preferences. These phenomena are generally assumed to presume sentience, and they all seem to be subjective phenomena. The abilities to feel pain or to have experiences or preferences are also often mentioned individually or together as being necessary for the

possession of interests.⁸⁷³ The ecocentrists – especially Johnson – have also spent quite a lot of effort trying to refute this belief. I will therefore use the three following sub-sections for a closer look at this particular debate.