Animal pain and suffering is, so one can safely say, mostly caused by humans, particularly by the human use of domestic animals for food (meat, milk, eggs), clothing (wool, skin) or recreation (pets, zoos, circuses) and experimentation (animal testing). It happens daily on a massive scale. This is made clear by Jonathan Birch (2023) in his recent review of Peter Singer's new book, Animal Liberation Now (2023). Singer's earlier book, Animal Liberation (1975), was one of the first to document in extensive detail the pain and suffering that humans cause animals, and his new book documents in further detail how the situation has become even more serious. The horrendous conditions of massive intensive farming world-wide in particular reflect a grievous disregard of the pain and suffering that humans cause animals. This calls for the recognition of animal pain and suffering. My focus is on pain-related suffering. I aim to argue for recognition in the phenomenological sense of giving adequate regard to pain experience in animals, and their capacity to express it in their own species-specific terms, in a way that will motivate us to prevent it.
Recognition in this phenomenological sense differs from the concept of ‘mutual recognition’ that lies at the heart of the contemporary discussion (Iser 2019). Mutual recognition is thought to occur between human subjects exclusive of animals. Some theorists argue that the idea of mutuality is too narrow an understanding of recognition and admit also a wide understanding in terms of adequate regard (Laitinen 2010). In this wide understanding, the value or a valuable feature of any entity is affirmed, regardless of whether they are aware of such affirmation. This allows for animals to be objects of recognition even if they are not themselves considered subjects of recognition (Iser 2019). The majority of theorists seem to reserve mutual recognition exclusively for humans. I advocate a wide understanding of recognition that allows for animals not only to be passive objects of recognition but also subjects held in adequate regard as capable of expressing in their own terms the pain they suffer.
Academic debates commonly focus on comparisons between human and animal pain (Allen 2004: 621–637). As I argue below, in the first section, my assumption is that a comparative approach may be in part helpful but cannot suffice to give appropriate recognition to animal pain experience and its expression in species-specific terms. In fact, such comparison often leads to a disregard of animal pain because animals do not express their experience as humans do. Humans will typically report their pain experience by using verbal expressions to do so. An example of such report is the McGill-Melzack Questionnaire for pain (see Melzack 1975: 277–299). Such a subjective report will indicate what it is like for them to experience pain consciously from their own point of view.1 Notably, a subjective report is what the IASP (International Association of the Study of Pain) takes to be seminal to recognising pain (Raja et al. 2020). Non-verbal animals do not offer us such reports – not in human terms at least. It is not that subjective reports tell us completely what it is like for another human to suffer pain. But subjective reports do help, and this is why they are duly recognised by the IASP. However, if animals do not communicate to us verbally, how then, for example, can we know what it is like for a bat or for a crab to suffer pain? Given the problem of reportability in animals, it is not surprising that most research on pain in animals focuses on physiological and behavioural analyses of pain rather than a phenomenological analysis of its subjective experience.2 To be clear, phenomenology has as its methodological focus the study of seminal structures of subjective experience (interchangeably referred to as consciousness) and its expression.3 It seems fair to say that animals’ expression of pain can be considered a species-specific subjective pain report and needs to be taken seriously by the very standards of the IASP. Little research is done specifically on the expression of pain experience in animals. This gives all the more reason to make strong a phenomenological approach to recognition and explore the species-specific expression of pain.
If most animal pain is caused by humans, then it is important for us to recognise animal pain so that we can do something to prevent it. Recognition thus requires more than just learning to know of the pain animals suffer. Recognition of animals’ pain also acts as a motivation for us to change our ways of causing their suffering. My advocacy for the recognition of pain in animals thus includes a consideration of moral and political action to prevent their suffering. Consequently, the first two sections will focus on an exploration of the species-specific experience and expression of pain-related suffering in animals while the following two sections will consider moral and political action to prevent it.
Pain Experience in Animals
Before I say more about animal pain, some clarifications on the concept of pain are in order. In scholarly literature, pain is generally associated with physical hurt and suffering with mental agony (see Corns 2020; Van Rysewyk 2016, 2019). It is useful to recall Donald Price and James Barrell's (2012) observation that subjects suffer because of conflict in (or disruption of) relationships or through personal illness, disease or pain. It seems fair to say that this may apply to humans as well as non-humans. Therefore, subjects do not only suffer because of pain. Subjects may suffer because of illness, disease, depression, anxiety, frustration, and so on, without being in pain. Conversely, subjects may not suffer because of minor pain. Typically, subjects suffer because of pain when it is experienced as disrupting or burdening or enduringly harming their functional abilities and sense of well-being. Thus, pain-related suffering is typically viewed as acute or ongoing pain that becomes an enduring burden without the prospect of relief. Suffering of this kind may be associated with symptoms of traumatic experience such as depression, anxiety, stress, hopelessness, frustration and fear, and these factors may in turn worsen the pain.
As before, my focus here is on pain-related suffering. More precisely, as is mostly done in the literature, and for brevity's sake, I concentrate on physical pain rather than on other forms of pain-related suffering, not that it is not important to deal with other forms of suffering specifically caused by human practices. Physical pain is typically distinguished from psychological pain, such as grief or social pain, such as that caused by political atrocities (Olivier 2022). However, biopsychosocial models currently prevail in pain discussions, and these models assign biological, psychological and social dimensions to physical pain. Thus, physical pain may have psychological dimensions such as aversion, anxiety and fear or social dimensions such as social isolation or deprivation. These dimensions need to be considered when dealing with animal pain.
Now to animal pain.4 Until recently, there was still a widely held belief both within and outside academic circles that pain is a uniquely human experience (Breed 2017: 197; Rollin 2011: 425). Although it is now generally accepted that the capacity to feel physical pain is shared widely across animal species, debate amongst scientists and philosophers continues on whether some animals, such as fish, also feel pain (Balcombe 2016: 64; Key 2016: 1). Again, academic debates commonly focus on comparisons between human and animal pain (Allen 2004: 621–637). There are likely significant similarities between human and animal pain, and such comparisons may serve inferential purposes regarding which species experience pain. However, comparative approaches are considered insufficient by many (Allen 2004: 623). One important argument is that animals have adapted to different environmental conditions both evolutionarily and within their lifetime, which shapes their capacities and experiences in various ways. This includes pain experiences (Gregory 2004: 8; Sneddon et al. 2014: 204–209). Consequently, my assumption is that a comparative approach may be in part helpful but cannot suffice to give appropriate recognition to the pain of animals in their own species-specific terms.
This brings me back to the phenomenological approach I take to recognition. Again, recognition in this sense means to hold in adequate regard the capacity of animals to experience pain in their own species-specific terms. The contrary is the anthropocentric assumption that the human subject is the condition of the possibility of any assessment of what matters and is worth knowing. Instead, a very cautious approach to assessing pain in animals is needed to do justice to their own species-specific conditions. We must make sure not to impose definitions and criteria of assessment on animals to determine their pain. There is a danger to impose a hierarchy of criteria for pain according to which the assumption is that the more complex an animal is, the more serious their pain. It is not in the first instance important what pain animals experience but that they experience pain. With this caution in mind, I give a brief discussion of definitional features of animal pain experience before turning to pain expressions in animals.5
The definition for animal pain that is most commonly used is suggested by Manfred Zimmermann (Sneddon et al. 2014: 202). Zimmermann defines animal pain as ‘an aversive sensory experience caused by actual or potential injury that elicits protective and vegetative reactions, resulting in learned avoidance, and may modify species-specific behaviour, including social behaviour’ (1986: 2). This definition assigns several connected components to pain experience in animals. First, pain is associated with actual or potential injuries. It is generally accepted that under normal conditions, pain experience is a warning signal of an actual or potential injury. This requires the capacity of nociception, the activity that occurs in the nervous system in response to a noxious (harmful) stimulus. Pain experience thus requires central neural states associated with the capacity of nociception. Notably, it is postulated that many species qualify for this requirement (Walters and Williams 2019). In addition to mammals, this includes fish (Balcombe 2016: 62; Sneddon 2019) and crustaceans (Crump et al. 2022; Elwood 2019), as well as insects and molluscs (Walters 2018). Second, pain is associated with a sensory and aversive experience caused by actual or potential injury. Thus, pain is thought of not only as a simple bodily sensation but also as an aversive psychological state. The aversive state can be observed in, for example, avoidance or preference learning. Third, pain is associated with an evaluative-motivational component that induces protective and vegetative reactions (Sneddon et al. 2014: 203; Walters and Williams 2019). This, together with aversive reactions, is experimentally demonstrated even in what are considered less complex animals such as crabs. Finally, pain is associated with modified species-specific ‘social behaviour’, which suggests that it also has a social dimension. This arguably excludes some asocial vertebrate and invertebrate animals (Walters and Williams 2019), unless one considers ‘social’ to include one's interaction with other species and the broader environment as well.
The most common definition of animal pain is a complex experience consisting of multiple components. It is worth noting that this definition shows striking similarity to the most commonly used definition of pain, ‘applicable to humans and nonhuman animals’, as suggested by the IASP. According to this definition, pain is ‘an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience typically caused by, or resembling that caused by, actual or potential tissue injury’ (Raja et al. 2020: 2). Importantly, the IASP designates pain as a complex subjective experience with multiple biopsychosocial dimensions, including a sensory and affective state with negative valence that elicits motivational behaviour. Some may take the similarity in the ascription of sensory and especially affective and motivational dimensions to pain in both definitions as the main argument to show that animals have what one may deem subjective pain experiences (Sneddon et al. 2014: 202). However, again caution is in order, and one needs to carefully consider the multidimensional components of pain under species-specific conditions. Such caution is vital when considering pain expressions in animals, to which I turn now.6
Pain Expressions in Animals
If animals can show their capacity to suffer pain through expressions, and expressions count as their species-specific subjective report on pain, then this is all the more reason to recognise their suffering. Again, little research has been done on animal pain expressions, at least compared to expressions in general, thus these expressions are specifically important to recognition. However, such recognition requires a particular attitude of both caution and openness. Let me start with Patricia MacCormack's note of caution: ‘The demand for the other to speak in order to evaluate its value is a form of violence, most poignant when the screaming of a nonhuman animal being murdered or the cries of a nonhuman animal being tortured are not recognised as language’ (2020: 55). I am not going to argue that expression is bound to the capability to use language and that such capability should determine what animals are worth or whether their pain should be taken seriously. In contrast, my argument is for the need to remain open to taking seriously how animals may express pain in their own terms, whether this is in species-specific linguistic terms or not in linguistic terms at all. Thus, as MacCormack says: ‘The speech of the animal is not a testimony to evince worth but ignoring it for convenience or seeing it as a Cartesian “animals are machines” automated response is an undeniably vicious ignorance which directly emphasises the unaffectability of the anthropocentric human by the expressions of other organisms that makes this scenario deeply unethical’ (2020: 55).
How then should one approach the possible expression of pain in animals? MacCormack (2020) does not show what expressions in animals may amount to. I make use of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological view, particularly of language, to suggest what such an approach may involve. Heidegger takes a direct phenomenological approach to language by analysing the very concept of ‘phenomenology’ in terms of its etymological composition of the Greek terms phainomenon (‘phenomenon’) and logos (‘speech’) in Being and Time (2001: 7). The uninitiated reader may like to know that phenomenon refers to that which lets itself be shown in itself and that logos (‘speech’) means: ‘to let something be seen from itself’ (Heidegger 2001: 32). Speech (logos) means ‘demonstration’, not in the sense of reasoning or proving or judging but in the sense of pointing to, of letting phenomena be seen in their own terms. Importantly, what these phenomena show is what concerns or matters or is significant to them and, in this sense, what meaning things have for them.
Heidegger is well known for claiming that, mostly, our access to phenomena is not that free but rather ‘covered up’. There are different ways to be covered up. One is to be undiscovered, another to be hidden behind a semblance, or disguised by appearance, or, what happens mostly, buried over by concepts (Heidegger 2001: §34). One can easily see how this ‘covering up’ may apply to animals. Wild animals mostly do not show themselves but try to remain undiscovered or at least at a distance. Domestic animals do not hide but also typically appear to show little more of themselves than basic expressions of hunger, thirst, anger, fear, satisfaction or, as we shall see, pain. They are indeed disguised by appearance. Therefore, there are several reasons for animals to be covered up. However, what happens mostly, as Heidegger rightly indicates, is that the phenomena in question are buried over by concepts. This can be demonstrated by the following example.
As Les Mitchell (2019) and Bernard Rollin (2011) note, in the history of animal pain and animal experimentation, the human use of concepts often serves to deny the capability of animals to experience pain, let alone to express it on their own terms. For instance, in animal experimentation, descriptions of emotional or painful states in animals were generally avoided, using reductive terms instead only to indicate physiological or behavioural responses. Similarly, animals or parts of animals are referred to as ‘goods’, ‘commodities’ or ‘products’ in animal agriculture to hide cruel treatment. Thus, humans use concepts to categorise animals in a way that covers up their capability to ‘show themselves’ and their pain experiences.
The workings of our conceptual categorisation of phenomena are particularly apparent within a technocratic framework. Heidegger designates this framework as ‘enframing’, a form of placing phenomena in which they are ‘challenged’ rather than left to be under their own conditions or to present themselves in their own terms. The consequence is their disposal as entities for industrial use. This is particularly demonstrated by the devastating daily workings of factory farms and medical experimentation. However, they are mostly hidden away because it is better not to have them show the public the mass suffering they cause (Olivier and Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017).
Heidegger advocates a phenomenology of the liberation of language: the freeing of and from concepts that cover up and result in enframing phenomena. Liberation aims at opening up rather than covering up. Such opening up begins with preparedness to listen to what others have to say (Heidegger 2001: §34). They may express what matters and, in this sense, what has meaning to them, even without the use of conventional linguistic signs of sorts such as words. Notably, Heidegger (2018) radicalises this understanding of language in his late work On the Essence of Language. He argues here that language refers to any way phenomena come afore, appear, impress, appeal to or enchant us as humans, and in this sense express themselves and speak to or encounter us. Something or someone can stir, move or impress one without the use of conventional linguistic signs and thus still say a lot. Hence, Heidegger also speaks of the paradox of ‘sign-less’ or ‘soundless’ language (2018: 22–24). As he puts it poetically: ‘Language speaks as the chime of silence’ (2018: 30).
Heidegger's view finds again application to the recognition of the expression of pain in animals. I use the broader term ‘expression’ instead of ‘language’ to include less paradoxically both linguistic and non-linguistic signifiers. In the remainder of this section, I try to show with examples from empirical studies how in animals both species-specific linguistic and non-linguistic expressions can be considered to communicate the meaning of their pain and thus how it matters to them.7 Note that I do not claim that a consistent distinction can be made between animal-specific linguistic expressions and non-linguistic expressions. I simply draw this distinction by taking a phenomenological approach that seems to find support in empirical research. Thus, ultimately, by making this distinction, I want to advocate recognition in the sense of phenomenological openness to the capability of animals to use their species-specific means to express themselves.
Now, we will discuss some examples of pain expressions in animals. Neville Gregory offers a helpful list of ‘ways in which animals express pain’ (2004: 99). One can distinguish in this list both linguistic and non-linguistic expressions of pain in animals. Non-linguistic expressions may include the following: ‘escape reactions; abnormal posture, gait or speed, guarding behaviour’; ‘withdrawal and recoil responses; licking, biting, chewing or scratching; frequent changes in body position – restlessness, rolling, writhing, kicking, tailflicking’, ‘impaired breathing pattern, shallow breathing’, ‘increased rate of breathing; muscle tension, tremor, twitching, spasm, straining; depression, sluggishness, hiding, withdrawal, lying motionless, seeking cover, sleeplessness; avoidance behaviour and aversion to the scene of the trauma’ (Gregory 2004: 99). Linguistic expressions of pain may include vocal forms of communication, for instance, ‘vocalising – groaning, whimpering, crying, squealing, screaming, growling, hissing, barking’, ‘vocalising or aggression during movement or manipulation’ and ‘groaning during breathing’ (Gregory 2004: 99). One of these linguistic expressions may include, for instance, ultrasonic vocalisation by rats in response to aversive contexts such as pain (Kurejova et al. 2010).
A particularly active development in recent research over the past decade is the assessment of facial expressions as signs of pain in multiple species. To be sure, I take facial expressions in animals to belong to their species-specific non-linguistic expressive repertoire. Facial grimace scales, which are based on facial expressions that indicate pain, have been developed for at least ten different species of mammals (Mogil et al. 2020: 480). Such facial expressions in mice and rats, for instance, include orbital tightening, nose/cheek flattening, and ear and whisker changes (Klune et al. 2019: 2). Other species added over the last few years include horses, rabbits, cats, sheep, ferrets, seals, cows and pigs (Mogil et al. 2020: 486). However, some species may show facial and other bodily expressions of pain, which one would not typically find in mammals. As Jonathan Balcombe points out, fish, for example, do not have eyelids and have very ‘dead’-looking eyes. Their pain is expressed through mouth and gill opening and closing, wriggling, and tail thrashing (Balcombe 2016: 71). Because this kind of pain expression is not very mammal-like, it is often falsely assumed to be a reflex rather than a painful experience and outwards expression of this experience.
Importantly, some species are more expressive than others about their pain. Animal stoicism is widespread in animals and may have evolved as part of maintaining social rank; for instance, weakness perceived by others can be detrimental to that animal in some societies (Breed 2017: 197–198). Dogs may show pain expression only when alone; then, they may limp, lick incessantly, shrink away, shiver, whimper or even howl, or use facial expressions as a communicative function with humans without the danger of losing their social rank (Mota-Rojas et al. 2021).
Recognising pain expressions in animals thus can be difficult to identify even for experienced researchers, especially in invertebrates. A major difficulty is differentiating pain from distress or general lack of well-being (Gregory 2004: 100). This is particularly challenging in the case of reptiles, where chronic or persistent pain is associated with inappetence, lethargy and weight loss, and acute pain by flinching, muscle contractions, attempts to bite and aversive movements. It is often difficult to distinguish when these signs pertain specifically to pain and not to any other aversive state. This is, in fact, also the case with other animals.
There is, however, good reason to ascribe expressions of pain even to animals that are regarded lowest in complexity on the evolutionary scale and least capable of sentience. This includes crustaceans, for example. A closer and more open look at several signs of expression shows another picture, as Robert Elwood (2019) demonstrates. For example, hermit crabs usually abandon their protective shells quickly when they receive an electric shock and respond to the specific location of the noxious stimulus with complex, prolonged grooming, rubbing and wound-guarding. They also show fitness-enhancing, anxiety-like states such as increased wariness or risk-aversive behaviour. This corresponds significantly to Gregory's list of non-linguistic expressions mentioned above, including escape reactions, frequent changes in body position, avoidance behaviour and aversion to the scene of the trauma. Notably, crabs show rapid avoidance learning, switching shelters or emerging into light after only two trials when exposed to shock in an alternative shelter beforehand – behaviour that would usually be avoided, as it is associated with a high risk of predation (Elwood 2019: 2). There is currently no way of telling whether such behaviour exactly expresses negative feelings similar to human pain. However, it is only fair to say that crabs show expressively that painful stimuli matter to them (Elwood 2019: 5). At least if one agrees to phenomenological openness, one can consider species that are deemed less complex, such as crustaceans, capable of suffering and expressing their pain in their own species-specific terms.
Ultimately, due to our insufficient understanding of animal expressions, we may not be able to decode expressive signs of animal pain. A significant number of animals use what one can call an ‘animal-specific linguistic repertoire’ that serves to express and communicate specific meanings. Animals will know this better themselves, and, ultimately, we need to resort to making inferences. Important is the aim in cognitive ethology to study how physical and mental capabilities in animals evolved in natural conditions, the selective pressures involved and how these resulted in the large diversity of brains, mental abilities and behaviours seen in many species (Bekoff 2005: 24; De Waal 2011: 191). Essentially, the goal is to recognise the animal's point of view, even to imagine what it would be like to suffer pain like another animal (Bekoff 2005: 24).
The Call for Moral Action
In the relevant literature, suffering pain is typically seen as an alert that calls the sufferer to be responsive to their bodily condition or environment. In his book Pain: The Science of Suffering, Patrick Wall correctly argues that suffering pain switches the subject to an emergency mode (2000: 48–52). The emergency alert signifies that something is wrong and that this calls for attention and action. This goes not only for subjects of suffering but also for those in a position to recognise and so act in response to their pain. Animal pain, so I said in the introduction, demands such an action in response. Animal pain is mostly caused by humans. Recognition thereof acts as a motivation for us to change our ways of causing their suffering.
There are many kinds of actions to suggest. Singer's books offer such suggestions. As I mentioned above, in the next two respective sections I explore some suggestions around possible moral and political action. I make particular use of MacCormack's work because she helps to suggest action in line with a phenomenological approach of openness to holding animals in adequate regard in their own terms. In this section, I focus on MacCormack's position on moral action and in the final section on her and Achille Mbembe's positions on political action.
Let me start with MacCormack's approach to ethics in her anthology The Animal Catalyst: Toward Ahuman Theory (2014). The core premise of the anthology is to consider an ethics that breaks free from anthropocentrism and thinks carefully about our animal ‘commonality’. This is not to resort to claims of presumed resemblance between humans and animals. Drawing from Baruch Spinoza's ethics, among others (such as Félix Guattari and Jean-François Lyotard), MacCormack professes an attitude of openness to recognising the animal other as another self, vulnerable to humanist assumptions, commitments and practices that lead to their use and abuse (2014: 3). This openness involves an attitude of ‘grace’, of leaving the other be another under their own species-specific conditions, and thus it is an openness to alterity (2014: 3). MacCormack does not take direct recourse to Heidegger's phenomenological approach, but her approach resonates with his idea of ‘opening up’ rather than ‘covering up’ phenomena to let them be and ‘show themselves from themselves’. The ideal result is encounters with non-human others that are not dominated by preconceived human significations of what they are but ones in which it simply matters that they are. Conversely, openness to the animal other entails a refusal to subjugate them to human significations for the sake of their identification, stratification and eventual subjugation and exploitation.
MacCormack's more recent work, The Ahuman Manifesto (2020), builds on this anthology albeit with a shift of focus. As its title indicates, The Ahuman Manifesto is not only an academic book but also a ‘manifesto’. Like most manifestos, it sets out ‘declarations’ that call to action (MacCormack 2020: 2). As much as this book academically analyses possible action, it also seeks to ‘catalyse’ activism (2020: 2) – which is important for the sake of my argument for acting upon our recognition of animal pain. As in her anthology, the core is a call to ‘forsake human privilege through acts of ethical affirmation that open the world to the other and to difference’ (2020: 10). In this line of thinking, she discusses several kinds of action to consider, such as ‘to practice abolitionist veganism; cease reproduction of humans; develop experimental modes of expression beyond anthropocentric signifying systems of representation and recognition’ (2020: 10). I focus here on making use of her consideration of animal rights and animal studies – in the next section, I deal with her view of identity politics.
MacCormack endorses what she considers an increasing movement from animal rights to absolute abolition (2020: 14). However, according to her, the philosophy of animal rights ‘traditionally serves the interests of nonhumans based on equivalences with humans and is a flawed politics of equality (equal to the human) rather than difference’ (2020: 14). She shares with Carey Wolfe (2012: 14) the concern that animal rights discourse is subjected to ‘human compulsions’ to define animals and their rights exclusively in human terms. The discourse is thus ultimately one between humans and their dominant perceptions of non-human entities. This merely serves to ‘vindicate their exploitation of those entities’ (MacCormack 2020: 14).
Importantly, MacCormack's view contradicts the view of those who still accord moral status, including rights, to animals even in contexts that are clearly destructive and cause pain and suffering for such animals.8 For example, abattoirs in most nations adopt, at least ostensibly, strict protocols around minimising pain during slaughter. Such protocols would be in accordance with the animal rights’ argument for granting moral recognition of physical harm enacted on these animals. The underlying assumption, which MacCormack rightly criticises, is that animals are thus still treated as moral patients subordinate to the harmful rights human agents accord to them within a framework of anthropocentric recognition. Her critique is particularly relevant to animal studies, to which I turn now.
MacCormack argues that in animal studies, the tendency is to impose a discourse and research on the animal ‘for which it has neither given consent nor has the power of address’ (2020: 14). As a result, the animal remains a victim of the ‘master's discourse’. Animal studies typically adhere to ethical clearance that is supposed to abide by animal rights. However, such conduct is still part of what MacCormack calls out as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract. It is a contract made by humans between themselves as the rulers and animals as the ruled. Thus, humans impose rights on animals as if they (the animals) were in a position to consent to these imposed rights (as an expression of their ‘general will’). Concomitantly, humans impose duties upon themselves as if they serve the rights of the animals. The contrary is a ‘natural contract’, one that ‘follows the tenets of symbiosis, which is a form of necessary care and grace which is a leaving (to) be in reference to human–nonhuman inevitable interaction – a natural contract which overthrows the entirely social contract within which most current debates around nonhuman entities occurs and which thus will always exclude them’ (MacCormack 2020: 15).
MacCormack's critical remarks on animal rights and studies are particularly relevant to animal studies of pain, as discussed in the first section. As I indicated there, research conducted into animal pain and suffering mainly draws from experimental settings that inflict pain and suffering on animals to assess its effect. This includes painful stimuli, social deprivation, lack of environmental enrichment, stress and fear. In a strict sense, no research on animals that involves harm can be justified as long as there is no consent from their side. Conceding the irony, I think one can at least try to cite studies that inflict pain to demonstrate it to argue that there is compelling reason to recognise animal pain and suffering and to stop it. This recognition is actually meant to call out harm caused to animals in the name of anthropocentric science. One may still object that the recognition of animal pain requires that we stop demanding experimental proof of their suffering. The first two sections above may therefore appear to be the antithesis of the third section. The question thus is: how does one defend showing examples of proof and then argue that we need to stop demanding proof?
I do not defend any experiments that cause animals pain to prove that they can suffer pain. However, I think it is one thing to draw attention to evidence that animals can suffer pain without inflicting pain and another to prove their pain by its infliction. One must not actually inflict pain on animals to prove it. There are alternatives to animal pain studies in laboratory settings. One such alternative is, for instance, offered by cognitive ethology, which advocates the study of animals in their natural environment (Allen and Bekoff 2007; De Waal 2011). Cognitive ethology faces the challenge of ensuring careful observation, as it may be resource- and time-intensive compared to laboratory settings. However, the study of animals in their natural environments has the advantage of accounting for the complexities and nuanced ways in which they express their experiences. Cognitive ethology thus seems to offer a viable alternative to experimental studies of animal pain. Another alternative is the use of completed experimental studies, harrowing as it may be to refer to them. Such experimental evidence can be used without the need to do any further harm to animals or justify harm done to them. As I said, such evidence may be harrowing, but it can prove useful to take to task human-induced suffering. Hence, the reference to experimental evidence of animal pain does not necessarily contradict but rather underscores the need to prevent the infliction of pain through experiments. Therefore, by showing (epistemically) that empirical research shows that we can know that and how animals suffer and express their pain, the need to stop human-induced suffering can be endorsed (ethically).
The Challenge to Politics
In the previous section, I argued that the recognition of animal pain caused by humans requires moral action. In what follows, I argue that it demands also political action by making use of MacCormack's activist view on identity politics and, in addition, Mbembe's argument for an inclusive politics.
MacCormack relates her political approach to activism that prevents harm to animals to the quest ‘minoritarians’ in identity politics advocate: ‘Minoritarians have long fought for recognition and for access to those things which form basic perceived rights; this seems the default and obvious choice of activism for those devalued by their bodily demarcations of difference to covet’ (2020: 18). In minoritarianism, the fight is to restore equality through comparison between the oppressor and oppressed. However, so she objects, as long as identity politics is committed to anthropocentric thought, it will subject the animal other to a similar comparison, albeit one in which the oppressed is denied any possibility to be another subject in their very own right.
One can immediately object that MacCormack's analysis of minoritarianism does not sufficiently account for complex issues of racism and colonialism for those who have historically been denied any recognition and relegated to the margins or for Indigenous studies on the redistribution of land and the recovery of nature. The danger is to underemphasise what Frantz Fanon calls the struggle against the failed recognition of the colonially oppressed, specifically Black people, in Black Skin, White Masks (1967). Such underemphasis may in effect be seen to play into the hands of what Glen Coulthard in Red Skin, White Masks (2014) views as the continuation of the colonial project. MacCormack seems to be aware of this danger. In her view, however, the struggle for the recognition of animals does not exclude the struggle of minoritarians – or in cases such as in apartheid and colonialism, ‘majoritarians’ – in identity politics, but rather it is set against any form of human supremacism (MacCormack 2020: 21). Subsequently, the focus of MacCormack's own critique is on the anthropocentric claim of ‘humans first, human rights first’. She writes: ‘The idea that we need to privilege humans first then get our Earth into order is a perpetuation of anthropocentric exceptionalism’ (MacCormack 2020: 21).
MacCormack is not very positive about the prospect that humans will ever abstain from anthropocentrism and recognise animals on their own terms. She ends up opting for activism embracing ‘human depopulation towards extinction’ (MacCormack 2020: 16). I do not think that any advocacy of extinction is a good position to take. On the contrary, the advocacy of human extinction downright fails the recognition of those who suffered colonial violence and extermination. A far sounder step towards recognition, one that opts for inclusion instead of extinction, I suggest, is found in Mbembe's argument against the Anthropocene in ‘Decolonising the University: New Directions’ (2016).9
Mbembe – like MacCormack – takes as his point of departure a discussion of recent popular and scholarly work on the Anthropocene with its human-induced massive and accelerated changes to the Earth's climate, land, oceans and biosphere. Mbembe argues that the harmful and self-destructive effect of the Anthropocene teaches us especially that we are inextricably part of nature and natural history and to overcome ‘humanism and anthropocentrism, the split between nature and culture’ (2016: 42). Consequently, the seminal part of questioning the Anthropocene lies in what Mbembe calls the need to ‘decentre’ the human qua subject and to rethink it as an ‘object among other objects’ in its own right. As he puts it: ‘The human does not constitute a special category that is other than that of the objects. Objects are not a pole opposed to humans. Humans are objects among the various types of objects that exist or populate the world, each with their own specific powers and capacities’ (2016: 43). Importantly, Mbembe makes clear that the project of decentring the human subject does not mean to degrade humans but to uproot the Western colonial ideology of human mastery. As he writes: ‘Our world is populated by a variety of nonhuman actors’ (2016: 43). Consequently, he also claims agency for what is typically viewed as mere objects of nature without the capacity of agency.
Mbembe's view shows some similarity with MacCormack's. They both argue for the recognition of ‘nonhuman actors’. In this sense, Mbembe also argues for viewing non-humans to be left to be actors in their own terms. Moreover, like MacCormack's, Mbembe's argument is basically an argument against all kinds of human supremacism. This includes anti-Black racism and speciesism (Mbembe 2016: 44). At the bottom, the speciesist belief is in the supremacy of the human race – with the anti-Black racist believing in the supremacy of whites. Hence, ‘race thinking increasingly entails profound questions about the nature of species in general’ (Mbembe 2016: 44). This means at the least questioning the prejudice of human supremacism in all its manifestations. The contrary is, as Mbembe states strikingly, as follows: ‘In the last instance, non-racialism is truly about radical sharing and universal inclusion’ (2016: 44).
Despite some similarities, Mbembe's argument is less pessimistic than that of MacCormack. They agree that the Anthropocene must end. However, unlike MacCormack, Mbembe does not think it comes down to human extinction. In contrast, he challenges politics with a daring proposal. He argues for ‘radical sharing and universal inclusion’ of all species, that is, for political recognition in the form of an inclusive democracy that serves not one race or one species but a commonality that grants a place for everyone to be. He does not work out the details of what such politics may look like. One may in fact suspect that Mbembe is overly optimistic. But at least I think his position of inclusion is more balanced than MacCormack's and avoids the danger of continuing the colonial project far more effectively than hers on extinction.
Mbembe does not deal with animal pain specifically. But he challenges politics with a helpful argument for recognition in the form of a democracy that serves not one race or one species but a commonality. His challenge thus is for politics to be radically inclusive. Such inclusive politics should afford rights, laws, legislation and enforcement that can effectively prevent harm that humans inflict both on other humans as well as on non-humans. This may sound optimistic, but it is not impossible. Rights, laws and legislation are human constructions that can be created and changed by consensus. ‘Rights develop in communities which recognise them in practice’ (Allsobrook 2019: 24), so ultimately it is up to communities to change the rights they agree by consensus to enforce, including laws and legislation that permit practices that are harmful to animals. A significant example of such change is the European Union's commitment to end all cage farming by 2027 and California's recent ban on veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages (Birch 2023: 667–668). Thus, to prevent specifically the massive scale of pain and suffering inflicted on animals by humans, it is humans’ political behaviour that must and can be changed. The abolition of slavery, by analogy, was predicated on European, Christian ethics and politics.10 That is the basis on which Europeans convinced one another and others both to start and to stop slavery. Similarly, one cannot prevent humans from hurting animals without reference to human laws, legislation and enforcement. Such prevention is no easy challenge to politics, but it is possible.
Conclusion
To conclude, I argue for recognition in the phenomenological sense of giving adequate regard to pain experience in animals, and their capacity to express it in their own species-specific terms, in a way that will motivate us to stop it. My advocacy for the recognition of pain in animals consequently includes a consideration of moral and political action particularly to prevent grand-scale human-inflicted suffering.
Such advocacy poses a challenge to our predominant anthropocentric frame of thought and practice. One may object that as humans we are inevitably anthropocentric. In this framework, it seems impossible to see the world without using human language, concepts and ways of thinking, including our understanding of pain. But exactly this is why I advocate a phenomenological attitude of openness to the pain experience and especially expressions of animals in their very own terms. The challenge is of course that it is very hard to decipher and decode animal ways of experience and expressions. However, this is certainly not a reason not to be phenomenologically open to suspend our own experiences and expressions towards what others may feel, think and communicate in their own species-specific terms. Research has gone a long way in showing that animals express pain in their own terms in a way that we cannot deny anymore. What we have is sufficient to take their pain and suffering seriously. It is certainly enough for moral and political minds to open themselves and stop the massive scale of pain-related suffering humans cause animals.
This is not to say that seeing the world from a human perspective must harm animals. A humanist perspective is not necessarily at odds with care for our environment or with ethical and political behaviour towards animals. It is fair to say that most humanists may believe that our choices about how to act must take into account the impact on non-human animals. At least, according to the International Humanist and Ethical Union, humanism ‘stands for the building of a more humane society’.11 To be humane per definition means ‘showing kindness, care, and sympathy towards others, especially those who are suffering’, according to the Cambridge Dictionary.12 Notably, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary adds that the adjective ‘humane’ means to be ‘marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals’.13 If one takes as seminal to humanism a humane attitude, then one can claim that a humanist must be sympathetic to the suffering of humans and animals, thus they have to be open to the experience and expressions of the suffering not only of humans but also of animals. However, either there are not many humanists around, or humanism is not really promoting the humane very successfully. As Jacques Derrida argues: ‘For the past few centuries, we have waged a campaign against compassion that allows factory farms and other horrors’ (cited in Adams 2014: 23). Derrida (2002) strikingly calls it a ‘war on pity’. This inspired Carol J. Adams (2014) to make the title of one of her essays ‘The War on Compassion’. Derrida rightly contends that ‘everybody knows’ about this war. We all know about the ‘terrifying and intolerable’ ‘industrial, mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and genetic violence to which man has been submitting animal life for the past two centuries’ (Derrida 2002: 395). Humanism does not seem to be very effective in stopping the war on compassion. Maybe it would be more straightforward to just call it a war on animals. Let the facts speak. Humans have always managed to stop their wars. Why not stop the war on animals as well?
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Chris Allsobrook for his helpful comments on the first draft of this article.
Notes
I refer here to Thomas Nagel's (1974) definition of consciousness as a state of ‘what it is like’ for an organism. As Mark Solms (2022) says: ‘The most widely accepted phenomenological definition of consciousness is Nagel's (1974): “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism – something it is like for the organism”’.
See Solms (2022) and the reference therein to Crump et al. (2022).
See the standard definition of phenomenology in Smith (2018). My own use of the term also goes back to Heidegger's concept of the ‘method of phenomenological investigation’ (2001: 7). Accordingly, an investigation should not impose concepts on what is investigated but rather ‘let it be shown from itself’. The basic assumption of this methodological approach as I adopt it is to hold animals in adequate regard by allowing them to show (or not show) themselves in their own species-specific terms.
Research conducted into animal pain and suffering mainly happens in or relies on experimental settings that actually inflict pain or other forms of suffering on animals to assess its effect. Citing such research does not condone it. I deal with moral issues in this regard in the third section.
Note, some of my discussion on definitions and expressions of animal pain draws on Olivier and Olivier (2023).
This goes also for the consideration of criteria of animal pain, which I deal with somewhere else (Olivier and Olivier 2023).
The remaining part of this section draws from experimental studies discussed in Olivier and Olivier (2023).
For a similar critique, see Adams (2022) and Wolfe (2012).
Mbembe offers arguments against the Anthropocene in other works such as Necropolitics (2019) and Out of the Dark Night (2021), but I focus on the ‘Decolonising the University’ due to limited space and because it contains the core of his arguments.
I am indebted to Chris Allsobrook for this example.
https://humanists.international/what-is-humanism/ (11/11/2024).
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