Abstract
In this paper, I criticize the view that non-conscious entities—such as plants and bacteria—have well-being. Plausible sources of well-being include pleasure, the satisfaction of consciously held desires, and achievement. Since nonconscious entities cannot obtain well-being from these sources, the most plausible source of well-being for them is the exercise of natural capacities. Plants and bacteria, for example, certainly do exercise natural capacities. But I argue that exercising natural capacities does not in fact contribute (in a non-instrumental way) to well-being. I do so by presenting cases in which human beings exercise natural capacities that they do not enjoy exercising and that they do not desire (non-instrumentally) to exercise. I also argue that plausible views about fortune—how one’s well-being ranks on an appropriate scale—do not support the claim that exercising natural capacities contributes to well-being.
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Notes
See (Kagan, 2019, 196–201, 262).
I appreciate a reviewer’s challenge regarding this motivation for the paper. The view that sentience, rather than well-being, is sufficient for rights avoids the implication that plants have rights while implying that many animals have rights. So, isn’t a sentience theory of rights preferable? A sentience theory delivers verdicts about particular cases that many will find plausible. But I suspect that it depends for justification on the view that well-being is sufficient for rights. Suppose I’m asked why it is wrong, absent compelling reasons, to cause someone serious pain. I could maintain that the fact that an action causes extreme pain is a reason against it, a reason that lacks more fundamental grounding. An alternative response is that causing someone extreme pain makes them substantially worse off, and there is a fundamental reason not to make individuals substantially worse off. I think the second response is preferable. It seems to me—though I don’t have an argument to give—that reasons against causing extreme pain are grounded in reasons against making individuals substantially worse off. A similar story seems plausible if we shift from discussing moral reasons to moral rights: if there are rights against being caused extreme pain, they are grounded in rights against being made worse off. If that’s correct, then a sentience view of rights inherits the problems of a well-being theory: counterexamples to the well-being theory undermine the sentience theory. Thus, in my view, a sentience theory of rights is not more defensible than a well-being theory.
My use of the type-token distinction is taken from Lin (2018).
Griffin (1986, 56) writes that “perfectionistic accounts focus on a species ideal.” According to Sumner (1996, 78), “A thing has perfectionist value if it displays the excellences appropriate to its kind.” I understand a perfectionistic constituent of well-being more broadly: exercising and developing natural capacities. ‘Natural’ might be understood as Richard Kraut understands it (Section 3), or as ‘species-typical’ (Section 4).
Moving forward, to be concise, I’ll discuss only positive constituents of well-being. My arguments do not straightforwardly show that failing to exercise or develop natural capacities is not a negative constituent of well-being, but they suggest how to do so.
Though, some would deny even this—on the grounds that embodied consciousness is a metaphysical substance, such that nothing that lacks consciousness is numerically identical to an embodied consciousness (McMahan, 2016, 28)—and maintain that this bacterium would not be identical to the resulting organism.
I understand sentience as the capacity to have phenomenally conscious experiences that are positively or negatively valenced. This is a narrower concept than phenomenal consciousness itself: so far as metaphysical and perhaps nomological possibility are concerned, an entity could have the capacity for phenomenal consciousness without having the capacity for positively or negatively valenced phenomenally conscious states—e.g., an entity whose conscious experiences are limited to color experience (Kagan 2019, 13). But, even if Attfield understands ‘sentience’ as I do—in which case he is not committed to there being non-conscious animals who have a good of their own—his view on vegetable plants is in tension with the consciousness restriction.
See also (Kraut, 2007, 5) on the connection between flourishing and well-being.
Though, vindication of the larger argument given in Section 2 requires addressing this possibility.
I’m grateful to Dan Hausman for this objection.
What if the domain of strict actualization were limited to non-conscious entities, thereby avoiding these counterexamples? The parity assumption, together with this restricted principle, implies that extreme pain is non-instrumentally good for humans. Thus, these examples challenge a restricted principle as well.
I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for convincing me that Kraut does not give an analysis of flourishing, in part by highlighting a passage that indicates that Kraut would reject strict actualization: “We are free to arrive at the conclusion that some natural powers are bad for the person who has them” (147).
Note that unrejected actualization precludes Kraut’s hedonistic limitation; it implies that blinking, a longstanding capacity I do not enjoy, is non-instrumentally good for me, since I’m not averse to it. But, it does state a sufficient condition for well-being that applies to non-conscious entities and that avoids the counterexamples discussed.
Thanks to Rob Streiffer for helping me clarify this distinction.
I appreciate Benjamin Rossi's objection to my lack of a contrast case.
But is beauty a capacity? It is the capacity to elicit admiration or desire of one’s beauty or to prompt others to judge that one is beautiful. People certainly develop and exercise this capacity. Its exercise may be less active than that of other capacities, but it is similar in that regard to being a good listener, a capacity one can certainly exercise and develop.
Here I grant for the sake of argument that the concept species-typical capacity can be made precise, or that instances of it can be identified without a precise definition. Some views are unpromising. If C is a species-typical capacity of species S just in case only members of S have C, then, if morally sensitive aliens exist, moral agency is not species-typical of humans. Alternatively, if C is a species-typical capacity of S just in case all members of S have C, then moral agency is not species-typical of humans since not all humans are moral agents.
Important questions remain. Is the maximum level of well-being possible for an individual determined (as McMahan suggests) by the capacities they actually have, or by those they might have developed? Second, what is the modality of ‘possible’: is it that this level of well-being is metaphysically possible, nomologically possible, or merely not unlikely? Third, if conspecifics determine the appropriate scale, is it existing or merely possible conspecifics? Fourth, if existing conspecifics matter (this seems to be McMahan’s view), is the relative frequency of other individuals with some level of well-being important? (McMahan says yes [146].)
But is it even clear what is meant by this stipulation? It is unclear how to individuate instances of exercising capacities, and this may cast doubt on the intelligibility of the stipulation. For example, is the last sentence that I wrote, or my last conversation, one exercise of a capacity or a collection of such exercises? This uncertainty makes it difficult to compare Hannah’s total number of exercises of species-typical capacities to Daisey’s: even if we imagine with perfect clarity a day in the life of Daisey and Hannah, we cannot, absent a theory of individuation, count the exercises of species-typical capacities performed by each. But, it seems plausible that, however we decide to individuate exercises of capacities, we can imagine a version of Cognitive Disability in which the numbers for Hannah and Daisey come out the same.
Thanks to Rob Streiffer for pointing out the problem with this version of the STA explanation.
References
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I’m grateful to Rob Streiffer for very helpful comments and conversation. Support for this research was provided by the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, part of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, with funding from the Mellon Foundation.
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Mund, J. Non-conscious Entities Cannot Have Well-Being. J Value Inquiry 58, 33–52 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-021-09867-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-021-09867-1