How to Live · ages 7–10
Do animals matter?
Your friend says a dog doesn't matter because it can't talk. Is that a good reason?
A very long time ago, clever people argued that some humans did not really matter, because those humans could not reason properly, or could not talk properly, or looked different. It is worth reading what they said, because the reasons they gave are still in use today — just applied to animals instead.
Jeremy Bentham, writing in the 1780s, cut straight through it. He asked: what is the actual reason to care about a creature? Not whether it can think, not whether it can speak. Can it suffer? If it can, then there is something there that deserves not to be made to suffer for no reason. A dog can suffer. So can a pig, a rat, a fish. Bentham pointed out that a full-grown dog is more able to reason and far more able to hold a conversation than a baby of one week old — and nobody says a baby does not matter.
So far, so clear. Here is where it gets hard, and this is the honest part.
If suffering is what matters, where do you stop? A dog, plainly. A fish, probably. An insect — can it suffer, or does it just react? A jellyfish, which has no brain at all? There is no agreed answer, and the people who have thought hardest about it disagree.
And if animals do matter, what follows for dinner? That question is why this argument has never really gone away, two hundred years after Bentham. It is also why it is a good one for children: it has a clean principle at the top and genuinely hard cases at the bottom, and no one can copy the answer out of a book.
Try it
Pick one animal you know — a pet, or a bird outside. Write one thing you are certain it feels, and say how you know. Then write one thing you are not sure about.
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- Is it wrong to eat animals if you don't have to?
- Should an insect matter? A sponge? A jellyfish?
- If a robot could feel pain, would that change how we should treat it?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
Animals can't talk, so we can't know they suffer.
They behave as if they do, in every way we can check, and their bodies work like ours. Demanding a sentence before believing in pain would also rule out babies.
Humans are more important, so animals don't count.
More important does not mean the only ones that count. Your friend is more important to you than a stranger, and the stranger still counts.
Everything has to eat something, so nothing matters.
That is a fact about living, not an answer about causing unnecessary pain. The words doing the work there are 'unnecessary' and 'pain'.
What other philosophers think
- Jeremy BenthamAsks not whether animals can reason or talk but whether they can suffer — because suffering, not intelligence, is what makes a creature matter. Wrote this in the 1780s.
- Immanuel KantArgued we should not be cruel to animals, but for the sake of our own character rather than theirs.
- Peter SingerTakes Bentham's test seriously and follows it to the question of what we eat, arguing that equal suffering should count equally whoever it belongs to.
- Mary MidgleyArgued we are animals too, and that pretending humans are a separate kind of thing with no duties to the rest is the real mistake.
If you want to go further
- An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — Jeremy BenthamChapter 17 has the 'can they suffer?' line, in its original setting.
- Animal Liberation — Peter Singer1975. Where the argument gets followed all the way to the table.
- Beast and Man — Mary Midgley1978. On the oddness of treating humans as outside nature.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.