Abstract
We address the moral importance of fish, invertebrates such as crustaceans, snails and insects, and other animals about which there is qualified scientific uncertainty about their sentience. We argue that, on a sentientist basis, one can at least say that how such animals fare make ethically significant claims on our character. It is a requirement of a morally decent (or virtuous) person that she at least pays attention to and is cautious regarding the possibly morally relevant aspects of such animals. This involves having a moral stance, in the sense of patterns of perception, such that one notices such animals as being morally relevant in various situations. For the person who does not already consider these animals in this way, this could be a big change in moral psychology, and can be assumed to have behavioural consequences, albeit indeterminate. Character has been largely neglected in the literature, which focuses on act-centred approaches (i.e. that the evidence on sentience supports, or does not support, taking some specific action). We see our character-centred approach as complementary to, not superior to, act-centred approaches. Our approach has the advantage of allowing us to make ethically interesting and practically relevant claims about a wider range of cases, but it has the drawback of providing less specific action guidance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
That is, sentience in the sense of a capacity to experience pain or suffering. A capacity to feel bad; to have mental states that are affective and aversive or that have negative valence of the sort recognised by many ethical theories.
Broom (2013, p. 152) draws the weaker conclusion that “there is a case for some degree of protection for spiders, gastropods and insects,” without specifying the step from the empirical to the normative.
Examples of such judgements have been given above.
E.g., Mather (2011) discusses contractarian, utilitarian and rights-based approaches, but not approaches focusing on virtue or character.
For an overview, see Akhtar (2011).
The number 1018 is from Hölldobler and Wilson (2009, p. 5), which refers to a calculation by Williams (1964). The number 1019 is from the Entomological Society of America (2010), which says that according to E. O. Wilson, there are nearly 1019 insects. The numbers 1018 and 1019 may refer partly to animals that are sometimes no longer classified as insects; in particular, springtails, which are tiny, extremely numerous organisms. When they were considered insects, they were the most numerous insect (Hopkin 1997 front flap).
For more on this topic, see Tomasik (2016c).
A reply to the doubt that the suffering may not be sufficiently severe is to make a conservative assumption about the likelihood that the beings’ suffering is sufficiently severe, although it would make the argument more complicated.
As Sandin et al. (2002, pp. 292–293) notes, “cautiousness in one respect often leads to incautiousness in another.”
Both Lockwood and Eisemann and colleagues here speak of respect for living organisms, but they seem to have the possibility of sentience in mind. Others, however, emphasize respect for life (seemingly life itself). For example, Adamo (2016, p. 78) says that “insects should be handled with care for reasons that do not hinge on whether or not they experience pain…. All research animals should be handled in a way that reflects a respect for life, regardless of their ability to experience pain.” A respect for life is different from the disposition we are concerned with in this section: attention and cautiousness when there is sufficient uncertainty about sentience.
References
Adamo, S. A. (2016). Do insects feel pain? A question at the intersection of animal behaviour, philosophy and robotics. Animal Behaviour, 118, 75–79.
Akhtar, S. (2011). Animal pain and welfare: Can pain sometimes be worse for them than for us? In T. L. Beauchamp & R. G. Frey (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of animal ethics (pp. 495–518). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Broom, D. M. (2013). The welfare of invertebrate animals such as insects, spiders, snails, and worms. In T. A. van der Kemp & M. Lachance (Eds.), Animal suffering: From science to law (pp. 135–152). Paris: Éditions Yvon Blais.
Broom, D. M. (2014). Sentience and animal welfare. Wallingford: CABI.
Calder, T. (2005). Kant and degrees of wrongness. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 39(2), 229–244.
Chan, K. M. A. (2011). Ethical extensionism under uncertainty of sentience: Duties to non-human organisms without drawing a line. Environmental Values, 20(3), 323–346.
Cooper, J. E. (2011). Anesthesia, analgesia, and euthanasia of invertebrates. ILAR Journal, 52(2), 196–204.
Crook, R. J., & Walters, E. T. (2011). Nociceptive behavior and physiology of molluscs: Animal welfare implications. ILAR Journal, 52(2), 185–195.
Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
Eisemann, C. H., Jorgensen, W. K., Merritt, D. J., Rice, M. J., Cribb, B. W., Webb, P. D., et al. (1984). Do insects feel pain?—A biological view. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 40(2), 164–167.
Entomological Society of America (ESA). (2010). Frequently asked questions on entomology. http://www.entsoc.org/resources/faq/#triv1. Accessed June 21, 2016.
Gren, J. (2004). Applying utilitarianism: The problem of practical action-guidance (PhD dissertation). University of Gothenburg.
Hansson, S. O. (2013). The ethics of risk: Ethical analysis in an uncertain world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harvey-Clark, C. (2011). IACUC challenges in invertebrate research. ILAR Journal, 52(2), 213–220.
Hölldobler, B., & Wilson, E. O. (2009). The superorganism: The beauty, elegance, and strangeness of insect societies. New York: W.W. Norton.
Hopkin, S. P. (1997). Biology of the springtails: (Insecta: Collembola). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horta, O. (2010). Disvalue in nature and intervention. Pensata Animal, 34.
Horvath, K., Angeletti, D., Nascetti, G., & Carere, C. (2013). Invertebrate welfare: An overlooked issue. Annali dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità, 49(1), 9–17.
Hume, D. (1978). A treatise of human nature (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewbart, G. A., & Mosley, C. (2012). Clinical anesthesia and analgesia in invertebrates. Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine, 21(1), 59–70.
Lockwood, J. A. (1987). The moral standing of insects and the ethics of extinction. Florida Entomologist, 70(1), 70–89.
Lockwood, J. A. (2011). Do bugs feel pain? OUPblog. http://blog.oup.com/2011/11/bug-pain/. Accessed June 20, 2016.
Lund, V., Mejdell, C. M., Röcklinsberg, H., Anthony, R., & Håstein, T. (2007). Expanding the moral circle: Farmed fish as objects of moral concern. Diseases of aquatic organisms, 75(2), 109–118.
Mather, J. A. (2011). Philosophical background of attitudes toward and treatment of invertebrates. ILAR Journal, 52(2), 205–212.
Munthe, C. (2011). The price of precaution and the ethics of risk. New York: Springer.
Munthe, C. (2016). Precautionary principle. In H. ten Have (Ed.), Encyclopedia of global bioethics (pp. 2257–2265). New York: Springer.
Sandin, P. (2009). A new virtue-based understanding of the precautionary principle. In M. A. Bedau & E. C. Parke (Eds.), The ethics of protocells: Moral and social implications of creating life in the laboratory (pp. 89–104). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sandin, P., Peterson, M., Ove Hansson, S., Rudén, C., & Juthe, A. (2002). Five charges against the precautionary principle. Journal of Risk Research, 5(4), 287–299.
Slote, M. (1992). From morality to virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sneddon, L. U. (2015). Pain in aquatic animals. Journal of Experimental Biology, 218(7), 967–976.
Sneddon, L. U., Elwood, R. W., Adamo, S. A., & Leach, M. C. (2014). Defining and assessing animal pain. Animal Behaviour, 97, 201–212.
Sømme, L. (2005). Sentience and pain in invertebrates (Report to Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Dept. of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences.).
Steel, D. (2014). Philosophy and the precautionary principle: Science, evidence, and environmental policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taurek, J. M. (1977). Should the numbers count? Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6(4), 293–316.
Tomasik, B. (2016a). The importance of insect suffering. Essays on Reducing Suffering. http://reducing-suffering.org/the-importance-of-insect-suffering/. Accessed June 20, 2016.
Tomasik, B. (2016b). Convert grass lawns to gravel to reduce insect suffering. Essays on Reducing Suffering. http://reducing-suffering.org/convert-grass-lawns-to-gravel-to-reduce-insect-suffering/. Accessed June 20, 2016.
Tomasik, B. (2016c). Is brain size morally relevant? Essays on Reducing Suffering. http://reducing-suffering.org/is-brain-size-morally-relevant/. Accessed June 21, 2016.
Tomasik, B. (2016d). Humane insecticides. Essays on Reducing Suffering. http://reducing-suffering.org/humane-insecticides/. Accessed June 21, 2016.
Urmson, J. O. (1973). Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. American Philosophical Quarterly, 10(3), 223–230.
Vallentyne, P. (2005). Of mice and men: Equality and animals. Journal of Ethics, 9(3), 403–433.
Wigglesworth, V. B. (1980). Do insects feel pain? Antenna, 4, 8–9.
Williams, C. B. (1964). Patterns in the balance of nature: And related problems in quantitative ecology. New York: Academic Press.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Oscar Horta, Brian Tomasik, Bengt Brülde, Dorna Behdadi, Ragnar Francén, Peter Singer and especially Joakim Sandberg for generous feedback on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Benjamin Martens and Gordon Hanzmann-Johnson for improving the English of earlier versions of the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Knutsson, S., Munthe, C. A Virtue of Precaution Regarding the Moral Status of Animals with Uncertain Sentience. J Agric Environ Ethics 30, 213–224 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9662-y
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9662-y