Sentiocentrism

Last updated September 14, 2023

Sentiocentrism, sentio-centrism, or sentientism is an ethical view that places sentient individuals at the center of moral concern. Both humans and other sentient individuals have rights and/or interests that must be considered.^[1]

Sentiocentrists consider discrimination between sentient beings of different species to be speciesism, an arbitrary discrimination. Coherent sentiocentrist belief respects all sentient beings. Many self-described humanists see themselves as "sentientists" where the term humanism contrasts with theism and does not describe the sole focus of humanist concerns. Sentiocentrism stands in opposition to the philosophy of anthropocentrism.^[2]

History

The 18th-century utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham was among the first to argue for sentiocentrism.^[2] He maintained that any individual who is capable of subjective experience should be considered a moral subject.^[3] Members of species who are able to experience pleasure and pain are thus included in the category.^[3] In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham made a comparison between slavery and sadism toward humans and non-human animals:

The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor [see Louis XIV's Code Noir] ... What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
— Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, (1823), 2nd edition, Chapter 17, footnote

The late 19th- and early 20th-century American philosopher J. Howard Moore, in Better World Philosophy (1899), described every sentient being as existing in a constant state of struggle. He argued that what aids them in their struggle can be called good and what opposes them can be called bad. Moore believed that only sentient beings can make such moral judgements because they are the only parts of the universe which can experience pleasure and suffering. As a result, he argued that sentience and ethics are inseparable and therefore every sentient piece of the universe has an intrinsic ethical relationship to every other sentient part, but not the insentient parts.^[4]^: 81–82 Moore used the term "zoocentricism" to describe the belief that universal consideration and care should be given to all sentient beings; he believed that this was too difficult for humans to comprehend in their current stage of development.^[4]^: 144

Other prominent philosophers discussing or defending sentiocentrism include Peter Singer,^[5] Tom Regan,^[6] and Mary Anne Warren.^[7]

Sentiocentrism is a term contained in the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, edited by Marc Bekoff and Carron A. Meaney.^[1]

Concept

Sentiocentrism believes that sentience is the necessary and sufficient condition in order to belong to the moral community.^[8] Other organisms, therefore, aside from humans are morally important in their own right.^[9] According to the concept, there are organisms that have some subjective experience, which include self-awareness, rationality as well as the capacity to experience pain and suffering.^[10]

There are sources that consider sentiocentrism as a modification of traditional ethic, which holds that moral concern must be extended to sentient animals.^[11]

Justification

Peter Singer provides the following justification of sentiocentrism:

The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a child. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this way. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering – in so far as rough comparisons can be made – of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience (...) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others.
— Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (2011), 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, p. 50

In line with the above, utilitarian philosophers such as Singer not only care about the wellbeing of humans, but also about the wellbeing of sentient non-human animals. Utilitarians reject speciesism, the discrimination of individuals on the basis of their species membership. Drawing an analogy between speciesism and other forms of arbitrary discrimination, Peter Singer writes that

Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
— Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (2002), 3rd edition, Ecco: New York, p. 9

Gradualism

In the animal kingdom, there is a gradation in the nervous complexity taking examples from the marine sponges that lack neurons, intestinal worms with ~ 300 neurons or humans with ~ 86 billion. While the existence of neurons is not sufficient to demonstrate the existence of sentience in an animal, it is a necessary condition.^[12] There is no known mechanism by which sentience can arise without the presence of neurons.

Gradualist sentiocentrism states that more complex interests deserve more consideration than less complex moral interests. One implication of this premise is that the best interests of a simple organism do not deserve consideration before the non-best interest in a complex organism (e.g., a dog with intestinal worms should be healed even though this results in the death of the parasites). Note that this does not lead to the rejection of interests of complex animals (such as pigs) versus the human desire to feed on them.

This is a vision that expands to areas that are not only relevant to other species, but to uniquely human issues, as is the case on the legalization of abortion. Gradualism poses a greater consideration of the mother against the fetus in question, given that the latter does not have the ability for complex interests in the early stages of gestation. An emblematic case in this debate is the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who says that "an early-stage human embryo, with no nervous system and presumably lacking pain and fear, might defensibly be afforded less moral protection than an adult pig, which is clearly well equipped to suffer".^[13]

As a fetus progresses they gain sentience until "the majority of neurons are already present in our brains by the time we are born".^[14] Since a 9-month fetus is nearing the mother's level of sentience, a sentiocentrist may, therefore, believe that greater rights should be afforded to a 9-month fetus than a 1-month fetus (if any). Late-term abortions should then require much greater justification under the law than a 6-week abortion, which may not require any justification under the law.

For example, "psycho-social" justifications are often viewed as valid reasons for aborting a fetus with little-to-no sentience, but it may take "medical necessity" to justify killing a fetus with a level of sentience approaching that of their mother.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speciesism</span> Discrimination against non-human creatures solely on the basis of their species membership

Speciesism is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions within the relevant literature. Some sources specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individual's species membership, while other sources define it as differential treatment without regard to whether the treatment is justified or not. Richard Ryder, who coined the term, defined it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species." Speciesism results in the belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals, which scholars say is pervasive in the modern society. Studies from 2015 and 2019 suggest that people who support animal exploitation also tend to endorse racist, sexist, and other prejudicial views, which furthers the beliefs in human supremacy and group dominance to justify systems of inequality and oppression.

Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin sentiens (feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to think (reason). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations. In different Asian religions, the word "sentience" has been used to translate a variety of concepts. In science fiction, the word "sentience" is sometimes used interchangeably with "sapience", "self-awareness", or "consciousness".

Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder is an English writer, psychologist, and animal rights advocate.

David Sztybel is a Canadian philosopher specializing in animal ethics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal rights</span> Belief that animals have interests that should be considered

Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth independent of their utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. Broadly speaking, and particularly in popular discourse, the term "animal rights" is often used synonymously with "animal protection" or "animal liberation". More narrowly, "animal rights" refers to the idea that many animals have fundamental rights to be treated with respect as individuals—rights to life, liberty, and freedom from torture that may not be overridden by considerations of aggregate welfare.

The argument from marginal cases is a philosophical argument within animal rights theory regarding the moral status of non-human animals. Its proponents hold that if human infants, senile people, the comatose, and cognitively disabled people have direct moral status, non-human animals must have a similar status, since there is no known morally relevant characteristic that those marginal-case humans have that animals lack. "Moral status" may refer to a right not to be killed or made to suffer, or to a general moral requirement to be treated in a certain way.

Mary Anne Warren was an American writer and philosophy professor, noted for her writings on the issue of abortion and animal rights.

Animal ethics is a branch of ethics which examines human-animal relationships, the moral consideration of animals and how nonhuman animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, wild animal suffering, the moral status of nonhuman animals, the concept of nonhuman personhood, human exceptionalism, the history of animal use, and theories of justice. Several different theoretical approaches have been proposed to examine this field, in accordance with the different theories currently defended in moral and political philosophy. There is no theory which is completely accepted due to the differing understandings of what is meant by the term ethics; however, there are theories that are more widely accepted by society such as animal rights and utilitarianism.

The intrinsic value of a human or any other sentient animal comes from within itself. It is the value it places on its own lived experience, valuing it as an end in itself. Intrinsic value exists wherever there are beings that value themselves.

Biocentrism, in a political and ecological sense, as well as literally, is an ethical point of view that extends inherent value to all living things. It is an understanding of how the earth works, particularly as it relates to its biosphere or biodiversity. It stands in contrast to anthropocentrism, which centers on the value of humans. The related ecocentrism extends inherent value to the whole of nature.

Plant rights are rights to which plants may be entitled. Such issues are often raised in connection with discussions about human rights, animal rights, biocentrism, or sentiocentrism.

Raymond G. Frey was a professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, specializing in moral, political and legal philosophy, and author or editor of a number of books. He was a noted critic of animal rights.

Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, and killings by other animals, as well as psychological stress. Some estimates indicate that these individual animals make up the vast majority of animals in existence. An extensive amount of natural suffering has been described as an unavoidable consequence of Darwinian evolution and the pervasiveness of reproductive strategies which favor producing large numbers of offspring, with a low amount of parental care and of which only a small number survive to adulthood, the rest dying in painful ways, has led some to argue that suffering dominates happiness in nature.

<i>Animal Rights Without Liberation</i> 2012 book by British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane

Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations is a 2012 book by the British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane, in which it is argued that animal rights philosophy can be decoupled from animal liberation philosophy by the adoption of the interest-based rights approach. Cochrane, arguing that there is no reason that (nonhuman) animals should be excluded from justice, adopts Joseph Raz's account of interest rights and extends it to include animals. He argues that sentient animals possess a right not to be made to suffer and a right not to be killed, but not a right to freedom. The book's chapters apply Cochrane's account to a number of interactions between humans and animals; first animal experimentation, then animal agriculture, the genetic engineering of animals, the use of animals in entertainment and sport, the relationship of animals to environmental practices and the use of animals in cultural practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Welfare biology</span> Proposed field of research

Welfare biology is a proposed cross-disciplinary field of research to study the positive and negative well-being of sentient individuals in relation to their environment. Yew-Kwang Ng first advanced the field in 1995. Since then, its establishment has been advocated for by a number of writers, including philosophers, who have argued for the importance of creating the research field, particularly in relation to wild animal suffering. Some researchers have put forward examples of existing research that welfare biology could draw upon and suggested specific applications for the research's findings.

The relationship between animal ethics and environmental ethics concerns the differing ethical consideration of individual nonhuman animals—particularly those living in spaces outside of direct human control—and conceptual entities such as species, populations and ecosystems. The intersection of these two fields is a prominent component of vegan discourse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethics of uncertain sentience</span> Applied ethics issue

The ethics of uncertain sentience refers to questions surrounding the treatment of and moral obligations towards individuals whose sentience—the capacity to subjectively sense and feel—and resulting ability to experience pain is uncertain; the topic has been particularly discussed within the field of animal ethics, with the precautionary principle frequently invoked in response.

Catia Faria is a Portuguese moral philosopher and activist for animal rights and feminism. She is assistant professor in Applied Ethics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and is a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics. Faria specialises in normative and applied ethics, especially focusing on how they apply to the moral consideration of non-human animals. In 2022, she published her first book, Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature.

Moral circle expansion is an increase over time in the number and type of entities given moral consideration. The general idea of moral inclusion was discussed by ancient philosophers and since the 19th century has inspired social movements related to human rights and animal rights. Especially in relation to animal rights, the philosopher Peter Singer has written about the subject since the 1970s, and since 2017 so has the think tank Sentience Institute, part of the 21st-century effective altruism movement. There is significant debate on whether humanity actually has an expanding moral circle, considering topics such as the lack of a uniform border of growing moral consideration and the disconnect between people's moral attitudes and their behavior. Research into the phenomenon is ongoing.

<i>Animal Ethics in the Wild</i> Book about wild animal suffering and ethics

Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature is a 2022 book by the philosopher Catia Faria published by Cambridge University Press. It examines wild animal suffering as a moral problem. Faria contends that if we have a moral obligation to aid those in need, we should intervene in nature to prevent or alleviate the suffering of wild animals, as long as it is practical and leads to a net positive outcome.

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1 2 Mills, D. S.; Marchant-Forde, Jeremy N. (2010). The Encyclopedia of Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare. Oxfordshire: CABI. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-85199-724-7.
1 2 Moore, John Howard (1899). Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis. Chicago: The Ward Waugh Company.
↑ Singer, Peter (2011). Practical Ethics (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0521707688.
↑ Regan, Tom (2004). The Radical Egalitarian Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 82–90.
↑ Warren, Mary Anne. A Critique of Regan's Animal Rights Theory. pp. 90–97.
↑ Erdős, László (2020). Green Heroes: From Buddha to Leonardo DiCaprio. Springer Nature. p. 87. ISBN 978-3-030-31806-2.
↑ Bekoff, Marc (2009). Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, 2nd Edition [2 volumes]: Second Edition. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-313-35255-3.
↑ M.Konisky, David (2020). Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 392. ISBN 978-1-78897-284-0.
↑ Bekoff, Marc; Meaney, Carron A. (1998). Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Oxon: Routledge. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-135-93002-8.
↑ Freitas, R.A. Jr. (April 1984). "Xenopsychology". Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact . 104: 41–53.
↑ Dawkins, Richard. "Essentialism". Edge.org. Retrieved 2020-02-29.
↑ "Essentialism". ninds.nih.gov. Retrieved 2020-03-22.