Purpose in the Universe: The moral and metaphysical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism by Tim Mulgan

Author:Tim Mulgan [Mulgan, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: azw, pdf
ISBN: 9780199646142
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

8.2 Animal Suffering

Modern biology has taught us the sheer scale of suffering in the animal world, much of it long before the arrival of human beings.8 A world with so much suffering seems very suboptimal. BT must either deny that animal suffering is evil; deny that God must choose the best possible world; or argue that the evil of animal suffering is outweighed by some greater good.

Descartes’s notorious denial that animals suffer is no longer empirically credible.9 Some animals are sentient. And agony is paradigmatically bad for any sentient individual. In principle, BT could simply deny that God cares about animals. Perhaps God is benevolent only to humans. But few actual BTs take this line today. And two of our utilitarian commitments oppose it. First, utilitarians emphasize the significance of pain in human well-being. Utilitarians debate what to add to hedonism. But all agree that agony is very intrinsically bad. If our agony is so bad, it is hard to see how animal agony could count for nothing. Second, utilitarian animal rights advocates highlight similarities between humans and other animals. It is anthropocentric caprice to restrict one’s benevolence to human sentience. Such speciesism is unworthy of God. A consistent benevolent God will care about animals. The vast animal agony in our world is a very great evil.

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