Imagining Other Species’ Pains: Four Challenges

A central problem in animal ethics concerns the weighting of nonhuman pains. In one view, we should not cause any nonhuman pain without a very good reason. In a competing view, we should balance nonhuman pain against human benefits. I assume here, for the purpose of argument, that the competing view is correct. To balance things, we need to know what each one weighs. There are four challenges to knowing the weight of animal pain: motivation, scope, content, and method. In this paper, I survey each challenge while trying to imagine a cow’s and a shrimp’s pains.

This paper begins with an introduction and then discusses four challenges:

1. Motivation: Imagining is difficult;
2. Scope: Not all animals feel pain;
3. Content: Their pains may not be like ours;
4. Method: Perhaps the arts can help.

The introduction asks, why is it important to imagine another species’ pain? But I do not spend much time on this one. While scientists once assured us that no nonhumans were truly sentient, that tune changed decades ago. The scientific problem now is not to determine which vertebrates feel pain, but how best to measure (Mogil, 2019; Mogil et al., 2020), prevent (Dawkins, 2021; Marian Stamp, 2006; Rollin, 1998, 1989) and treat it (Public Health Service, 2010; for a contrary view: Murray, 2008). Pain is subjective; as Nagel might put it, there is something it is like to be in pain (Nagel, 1974).

Since pain hurts, since animals mind it, and since we cause a lot of it, causing pain raises ethical questions. I assume that we ought to do what we can to minimize the pain we cause others. That said, we are typically not motivated to prevent pain unless we somehow feel it. In the fourth section, Method, I suggest that the creative arts may help us both understand and feel other species’ pains.