Does suffering dominate enjoyment in the animal kingdom? An update to welfare biology. Zach Groff, Yew-Kwang Ng. Biology & Philosophy, August 2019, 34:40. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-019-9692-0
Abstract: Ng (Biol Philos 10(3):255–285, 1995, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00852469) models the evolutionary dynamics underlying the existence of suffering and enjoyment and concludes that there is likely to be more suffering than enjoyment in nature. In this paper, we find an error in Ng’s model that, when fixed, negates the original conclusion. Instead, the model offers only ambiguity as to whether suffering or enjoyment predominates in nature. We illustrate the dynamics around suffering and enjoyment with the most plausible parameters. In our illustration, we find surprising results: the rate of failure to reproduce can improve or worsen average welfare depending on other characteristics of a species. Our illustration suggests that for organisms with more intense conscious experiences, the balance of enjoyment and suffering may lean more toward suffering. We offer some suggestions for empirical study of wild animal welfare. We conclude by noting that recent writings on wild animal welfare should be revised based on this correction to have a somewhat less pessimistic view of nature.
Keywords: Animal welfare Animal suffering Welfare biology Effective altruism Evolutionary biology
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Introduction
In 1995, following the idea that scientists and economists should treat animal welfare as important in its own right, Ng proposed the study of welfare biology, with three basic questions: Which animals are capable of welfare? Is their welfare positive or negative? How can we increase their welfare? In particular, Ng argued that science should examine not only the welfare of animals currently used by humans but also, and perhaps more importantly, the wellbeing of animals living in the wild. Ng’s argument relates to the predation problem in moral philosophy, or the issue of whether animal rights requires humans to save prey from predators. Origi‑ nally proposed as a reduction ad absurdum of animal rights, the predation problem has prompted a number of responses from moral philosophers ranging from prin‑ ciples of non‑intervention to denials of feasibility to acceptance of an obligation to help only in dire cases (Clark 1979). Still others do not find available responses to the predation problem convincing, which motivates Ebert and Machan (2012) to promote a “libertarian‑ish theory of animal rights.” On any view that is not strictly non‑interventionist, an understanding of wild‑animal wellbeing is useful. Further‑ more, such an understanding is interesting in itself and may yield insights relevant to other problems, so Ng (1995) investigates the balance of suffering and enjoyment in nature.
The question of natural suffering extends beyond the predation problem to dis‑ ease, starvation, and daily stress. In recent years, a number of prominent thinkers in and beyond economics have weighed in on the possibility of stewarding nature to promote animal wellbeing. Economist, political theorist, and popular blogger Tyler Cowen argues for “modest steps to limit or check the predatory activity of carni‑ vores relative to their victims,” including not protecting or reintroducing predators in natural areas (2003). Oxford philosopher Jeff McMahan argues—in The New York Times, no less—that people of good will should hope for the gradual extinction of predatory species (2010). Even Matthews of the popular news site Vox asks philoso‑ pher Peter Singer in a 2015 interview whether humans should intervene in nature and what questions those researching wild animal welfare should be asking (Mat‑ thews 2015).
Several organizations now work on and research wild‑animal welfare, including the Wild Animal Welfare Committee, Wild Animal Initiative, and Animal Ethics. The first of these groups aims to apply the ideal of “guardianship” developed by the Farm Animal Welfare Committee to conservation and environmental manage‑ ment programs that, to date, have largely focused on species’ continuation rather than individual animals’ welfare (Wild Animal Welfare Committee 2019). The latter two groups are associated with what is known as the “effective altruism” movement, a group of philanthropists, advocates, and researchers who in their words aim to do good as effectively as possible. Many in the effective altruism movement believe that animals’ interests should matter equally to those of humans and see little differ‑ ence between actively hurting someone and failing to help someone in need, all else equal. For these reasons, it is a natural concern for the effective altruism movement that there may be a large number of wild animals suffering in ways that may be able to be at least partially alleviated. All three organizations are fairly young, suggesting that interest in the topic is growing among nonprofits.
Outside of philanthropy, academic biologists and environmental policymakers also deal regularly with questions explicitly or implicitly tied to wild‑animal welfare on a routine basis. Though environmental policies are more commonly designed to preserve species rather than to protect animals, compassion for animals often does motivate policies, and so policies’ effects on individual animals are well worth considering.
Research into what Ng (1995) terms “welfare biology” is therefore a high‑priority, highly neglected field. To date, virtually all research into human impacts on nature focuses narrowly on the conservation of species and ecosystem dynamics. Most theories in environmental ethics assign instrumental or even intrinsic value to natural processes, but few locate value within individual wild animals. Ng’s paper proposed a new angle to study animals in nature and humans’ effects on them. Ng (1995) discusses a number of critical topics in welfare biology. Ng addresses questions of which animals experience emotional states, which states they experi‑ ence, and how humans can improve wild animal wellbeing. Ng notes that suffering and enjoyment likely serve evolutionary purposes.
In this paper, we make a correction to Ng’s (1995) proposition that total suffer‑ ing in nature outweighs total enjoyment. In fact, as we show, total enjoyment may exceed total suffering or vice versa, depending on a specific evolutionary detail for which we have little information. We propose a revised version of the Buddhist Premise that suffering predominates in nature. Under the revised proposition, there is little reason to conclude one way or another whether suffering or enjoyment is more common. After presenting the revised Buddhist premise, we note an interest‑ ing tradeoff between the number of animals who suffer and the degree of those animals’ suffering. We illustrate these dynamics based on plausible assumptions from psychology. Finally, we offer some guidance for how other researchers in this area can make progress and how recent research should be updated based on this revision of the Buddhist premise.
The revised Buddhist premise
An important question regarding animal welfare is whether, on average, animals enjoy positive net welfare. This is the second of three basic questions Ng (1995) raises; the other two questions are the ‘which’ question (which organisms are capable of welfare) and the ‘how’ question (how to increase their welfare).
This first question is crucial. For example, if the answer is that animals on the whole enjoy negative (net) welfare, many people may find it more imperative for us humans to try to increase their welfare to a non‑negative level. In some extreme cases, some authors regard animal suffering (negative net welfare) as justifying the destruction of animal habitats (Tomasik 2016). Ng hopes for future improvement of animals’ welfare after significant scientific, economic, and ethical advances on the part of humans (Ng 1995, 2016b).
Ng (1995) argues that animals suffer from negative net welfare on the whole. Ng uses both a general argument and an ‘economics of evolution’. The general argu‑ ment is based on the observation that most animal species have large clutch sizes and a presumption (related to the economics of evolution) that individual animals not able to survive until mating probably suffer from negative net welfare.
The economics of evolution led Ng to propose the following:
Proposition (Buddhist Premise) Under the assumptions of concave and symmetrical functions relating costs to enjoyment and suffering, evolutionary economizing results in the excess of total suffering over total enjoyment.
This premise, it turns out, does not hold. Ng’s conditions have to be strengthened to make the proposition valid. The revised Buddhist premise we wish to propose is remarkable and has the same remarkable implications should the updated conditions hold, but whether the new conditions hold is a matter of further research and does not evoke any obvious intuition. Instead, we propose the following, corrected version of the Buddhist Premise: Revised Proposition (Buddhist Premise) Under the assumption of symmetrical functions relating costs to enjoyment and suffering, evolutionary economizing results in the excess of total suffering over total enjoyment if the square of each function is concave.
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