Available via license: CC BY 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
ETYKA online first
Speciesism and Painism: Some Further
Thoughts
DOI: https//doi.org/10.14394/etyka.1305
Richard D. Ryder, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Speciesism
I invented the word Speciesism in 1970 and since then it has been written about by many
thinkers including Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins.
The period 1970 to 2010 was a period of unprecedented reform for nonhuman animals.
In Britain twelve new animal protection laws were passed, while in the EU no less than
forty-two new pieces of animal welfare legislation became law.
Speciesism is mostly about human arrogance and discrimination against other animals
merely because they are of another species. It is an irrational prejudice like racism and
sexism, and is based upon morally irrelevant differences such as size, complexity,
dissimilar appearance to humans (e.g. octopuses and lobsters), or apparent lack of
rationality or intelligence. But it is painience that matters, not rationality or intelligence.
Seventy years ago humans and animals were regarded as being entirely different.
Christianity insisted that humans (allegedly created in the image of God) were in a
separate category. Animals were said to lack ‘souls’ and ‘rationality.’ So what? Perhaps
Aristotle and Aquinas really meant ‘consciousness.’
Early animal rights campaigners were often anti-slavers. They included Jeremy Bentham,
John Stuart Mill, and William Wilberforce.
In 1789 Bentham said of animals—“The question is not can they reason? Nor can they
talk? But can they suffer?”
Anti-speciesism follows the hitherto ignored moral implications of Darwinism.
Animals and children, being unable to defend themselves verbally, have similar moral
standing. Both groups need special protection.
Our important moral similarity with the other species is our common capacity to
experience pain. There is growing scientific evidence that many nonhuman species can
suffer. For me, pain (broadly defined) is at the centre of Ethics.
Painism
Painism (1990) is a moral theory that covers all painient beings, human and others.
In my theory of Painism, pain is very broadly defined to include all negative experiences:
2 RICHARD DUDLEY RYDER ETYKA online first
e.g.
Why is lack of liberty wrong? Because it causes pain.
Why is denial of equality wrong? Because it causes pain.
Why is injustice wrong? Because it causes pain.
“Pain” means all forms of suffering and so includes all negative psychological states:
e.g.
Why is fear wrong? Because it causes pain.
Why is depression wrong? Because it causes pain.
Why is boredom wrong? Because it causes pain.
(e.g. animals kept in farm, laboratory
and other cages)
Why is unsatisfied drive wrong? Because it causes pain.
Why is guilt wrong? Because it causes pain.
Why is disgust wrong? Because it causes pain.
• The only moral wrong is causing (or permitting) pain to others. Who do we mean
by “others”? We mean anything external to ourselves that can experience
pain, whether it is a human or nonhuman animal, a robot, a machine, or an alien
from outer space (provided they are all sentient, or to be precise, painient).
• We are mainly concerned about quantities of pain (intensity x duration) and not
the vehicles or qualities of pain. There are no morally lesser types of pain or
pleasure as Mill suggested.
So X amount of pain in a dog or a robot matters equally with X amount of pain in a human.
• As regards the classic conflict between Consequentialists such as Bentham on
one side, and Deontologists such as Kant on the other, Painism supports
Bentham’s belief that what matters is the end result in terms of pains and
pleasures, but it also agrees with the Kantian view that each individual matters.
As pain seems to be more powerful than pleasure, Painism proposes that our
main duty is to prevent, stop or reduce the pain of others, starting with the
Maximum Sufferers. A lesser duty is to give pleasure to others and make them
happy (e.g. by giving them comfort, care, or mutually enjoyable sex).
ETYKA online first SPECIESISM AND PAINISM 3
• The word “pain” covers all negative experiences. Arguably, however, the word
“sentient” covers only the senses (omitting thoughts and even emotions for
example.) The word painient is more precise. It excludes positive sensations
such as warmth but can include all negatives, including negative thoughts.
Maybe an alien from outer space could be sentient but not painient. Her
reactions to danger or damage could be ‘reflex’ and without feeling.
• Painism says we cannot add up pains (or pleasures) across individuals as
happens in Utilitarianism because no-one actually experiences such totals. A
pain, to be a pain, has to be experienced. Utilitarianism totals the pains and
pleasures of all individuals affected. Painism does not allow such totalling
(aggregation) across individuals.
• The trouble with Utilitarianism is that a group of sadists or rapists can be
allowed to torture a victim provided the total of all their pleasures adds up to
more than the victim’s pain!
• A masochist consents to pain because he derives a pleasure from doing so that
is greater than the pain. If they cause the avoidance of greater future pains, both
guilt and fear can have good effects.
• You cannot add up the experiences of loves or fears of a group of people and
make a meaningful total, so why do it with experiences of pain? There are
barriers that block the passing of consciousness from one individual to another.
Normally, no-one else can directly experience my consciousness (although the
artificial connection of one brain to another might one day enable this). My
empathy with what you are feeling is not identical with your suffering.
• So the quantity of sufferers in a disaster does not matter, morally speaking. The
wrongness of an event should be measured by the amount of pain experienced
by the Maximum Sufferer. One individual suffering agony matters more than a
million suffering slightly. So in “Trolley Situations” (familiar to all philosophers)
killing fewer victims is not necessarily morally better than killing many victims.
It is the amount of pain felt by each individual (particularly the Maximum
Sufferer) that matters.
Painism focuses upon all sentient individuals.
It focuses upon pain (broadly defined).
It focuses upon victims (not upon doers or “agents”).
4 RICHARD DUDLEY RYDER ETYKA online first
Painism is ‘consequentialist.’
Pain avoidance is the immediate objective.
But happiness remains the ultimate objective.
Pain is the great destroyer of happiness.
Pleasures can help to produce happiness.
Painism says it is correct to add up contemporaneous pains and pleasures within
individuals but not across them. But it is difficult to play off pains against pleasures
because pains are nearly always more powerful than pleasures. For example, most would
forego several hours of ecstasy in order to avoid an hour of expert torture. Furthermore,
pains are not exact negatives of pleasures. There are also some differences between a
pleasure and a reduction of pain.
If pain was to be considered the exact negative of pleasure then a cost-benefit analysis
would be theoretically possible between one individual on each side of the equation, e.g.
the pain of the Maximum Sufferer versus the pleasure of the Maximum Beneficiary.
Pain
• Pains and pleasures colour all our experiences and affect most of our behaviour.
• Pains, and their avoidance, dominate our lives.
• Pain is sometimes defined as “unpleasant sensory or emotional experience.”
• But in Painism I define pain more widely to also include perceptual, cognitive
and mood states—i.e. perceptions, thoughts, and moods. They can all be
negative, causing suffering.
• So there are at least five types of pain or suffering that are relevant to Painism:
(i) negative sensations (e.g. ‘physical’ or nociceptive and neuropathic
pains)
(ii) negative feelings or emotions (e.g. grief, fear, disgust, horror, frustration or boredom)
ETYKA online first SPECIESISM AND PAINISM 5
(iii) negative perceptions (e.g. of ugliness, distortion, mutilation, negative hallucinations
and other unpleasant interpretations of sound, vision, touch or smell)
(iv) negative thoughts of (e.g. shame, rejection, danger, loss, guilt and awareness of
failure, unfairness, criticism, insult or death)
(v) negative moods (e.g. depression caused, for example, by loss, frustration, or prolonged
stress etc.)
All these experiences are unpleasant.
• In scientific psychology ‘pain’ is similar to concepts such as ‘negative reward,’
‘negative reinforcement,’ ‘punishment,’ and ‘aversive stimulus’.
• Pains of all five types can be severe, moderate, or mild, and brief (acute) or long
lasting (chronic).
• Pain is always a negative experience and this unpleasant quality is often
associated with electrical and chemical activities in brain networks such as the
anterior cingulate cortex.
Ten Questions
1) Is Painism only concerned with Maximum Sufferers?
No. Painism may give priority to Maximum Sufferers but it is concerned with
all sufferers.
2) Are Trade-Offs (e.g. cost-benefit analyses) allowed in Painism?
Yes, but trade-offs can only be between individuals. The trade-off of big pains for smaller
ones is possible. So is the trade-off of small pleasures for larger ones. But the trade-off of
pains against pleasures is less certain.
6 RICHARD DUDLEY RYDER ETYKA online first
Causing severe pain that is unconsented-to is never justified, nor does one
individual’s pleasure ever justify another’s pain. (I regard these rules as arbitrary but
axiomatic.) But causing slight and brief pain in one individual in order to avoid or
reduce severe pain in another may well be justified. The brevity of the pain here seems
to be important.
3) Does intensity of pain matter more than its duration?
Painism sees the amount of pain as approximately the product of intensity and
duration of recent pain.
Amount of pain = Intensity of pain x Duration of pain
4) Does the sequence of pains and pleasures matter?
Yes, later pains (or future pains) count for more than earlier pains. (All’s well that ends
well and all’s wrong that ends badly.)
5) Is severe pain considered worse than death?
Yes, possibly, if death is painless.
Death, even if it is painless and ends in oblivion, still matters because of the pain it
causes to relatives and friends.
6) Can the intensity of pain be measured?
Yes. The British government’s Home Office has been scientifically estimating the intensity
of pain in animal experiments for some thirty years. This work comes under the
administration of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, and is based upon my
CRAE recommendations made in 1976. Similar procedures and principles (such as the
principle that the severity of a sufferer’s pain matters more than the quantity of sufferers)
should also be applied to human welfare legislation.
7) Should severe pain be treated separately?
ETYKA online first SPECIESISM AND PAINISM 7
No, but severe pain is a very different experience from slight pain (e.g. a brief
irritation, a moment’s inconvenience, or a passing twinge).
8) Is human nature intrinsically good or bad, compassionate or cruel?
Human nature is both compassionate and cruel. Painism encourages natural
compassion and inhibits natural callousness.
9) Does the lack of Free Will invalidate Painism?
No more than it may invalidate other moral systems. Free Will may be like Quantum
Mechanics rather than Newtonian Physics. Quantum Physics includes an element of
unpredictability or freedom. I believe the brain is a complex machine and the
consciousness of our decisions only occurs after our brain has taken the decisions. But
who understands Time? Who understands Consciousness?
10) If the brain operates according to Quantum laws does this answer the problem of
Determinacy and Moral Responsibility?
To an extent. Subatomic particles appear to have Free Will. Why do they go one way
rather than another? How can they influence each other at a distance? Particles ‘wait’ to
be observed before they ‘act.’ Is such “observation” the same thing as consciousness? Our
experience of our apparent Free Will may be our direct experience of the operation of
Quantum Physics itself.
Triage
So how should a painist nurse or doctor behave at the scene of a large accident
where there are many casualties?
They should apply the rules of Painist Triage:
(i) give immediate analgesic and other help to:
(a) those in agony (especially those who are going to die), and
8 RICHARD DUDLEY RYDER ETYKA online first
(b) those whose lives are at immediate risk
(ii) then treat all the others to reduce their pain and make them well.
Action (i)(a) means reducing the pain of Maximum Sufferers. As soon as this is Done, the
Painist nurse or doctor should move on and treat the new Maximum Sufferers, and so on.
So amongst those in pain they should always treat the Maximum Sufferers first. Painism
here puts the relief of agony at approximately the same level of priority as saving life. In
order to avoid later suffering, painists also help those who are not yet in pain.
CONCLUSIONS
• Painism not only brings together the best of Utilitarianism with the best of other
Ethical theories, it also joins philosophy with psychology by bringing together
their previously separated languages. It overcomes some of the problems of
modern Ethics. It has been hailed as the “best candidate” moral theory. (Joy
2019)
• Pain is a very strong foundation on which to build a moral theory.
• We all know about the reality of pain. It is a basic part of all our lives. It is not
like trying to build an ethical theory upon what an unknown God is supposed to
want us to do.
• Anything that causes pain (e.g. racism, sexism, or speciesism), however
‘natural’it is, is prima facie morally wrong.
• Painism is consequentialist. It focuses not upon the character of the doer but
upon the experience of the victim.
• A country’s government has the duty to care for all painients within its borders,
not only humans. Painience itself gives rights and moral standing. All painients
qualify as persons and citizens, and should be called “she,” “he,” or “they,” as
appropriate.
• Painism gives emphasis to each painient individual.
ETYKA online first SPECIESISM AND PAINISM 9
• The science upon which Painism is based, in particular the evidence that
nonhumans can experience pain, exposes the irrationality of Speciesism.
• As already said, Painism is concerned with the amount of pain (suffering)
experienced by each sentient individual regardless as to what that
individual looks like (robot, alien, or animal). So X amount of pain in a sentient
robot matters the same as X amount of pain, in, say, an armadillo or a human.
• When assessing a moral situation, simply look for the individual pains arising.
• Painism uses modern and secular language but is close to the moralities of
Jainism, Buddhism, and some other faiths, and to the concept of Ahimsa (non-
violence). It is also close to Christianity’s emphasis upon love for our
neighbours, where Painism would define ‘neighbours’ or ‘others’ to include all
sentient (painient) things.
• Perhaps the great difference between beings is not whether they are alive or
not, but whether or not they are painient. Increasingly, we should all feel part of
the community of consciousness and respect it.
Ackowledgements
I acknowledge the kind assistance of Penny Merrett, Hugh Denman, Robert Oxlade, Julius
Berrien, Henry Ryder, and Barbara Gardner.
Glossary of Useful Words
Pain = any form of suffering or negative experience.
Painient = able to feel any form of suffering or negative experience
Sentient = able to feel sensations, including positive ones
Consciousness = general awareness
10 RICHARD DUDLEY RYDER ETYKA online first
References
Alexander Joy: Ethics of the Future, Philosophy Now, 130, February 2019, pp 28-31
Richard D Ryder: Speciesism, Painism and Happiness : A Morality for the Twenty-First
Century, Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2011
Richard D Ryder: Painism in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Ed Ruth Chadwick, 2nd Edition,
Vol. 3, Academic Press, London, 2012
Richard D Ryder: Speciesism in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Ed Ruth Chadwick, 2nd
Edition, Vol 4, Academic Press, London, 2012
Biographical Note / Nota biograficzna
Dr Richard Ryder gained his MA (Experimental Psychology) and PhD at Cambridge
University and was Mellon Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Tulane
University. He invented the terms Speciesism in 1970 while working in Oxford, and
Painism in 1990. He is currently President of the Animal Interfaith Alliance (AIA) and
President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).)
Dr Richard Ryder uzyskał tytuł magistra psychologii eksperymentalnej i stopień doktora
na Uniwersytecie w Cambridge i był profesorem filozofii w Tulane University.
Zaproponował termin speciesism w 1970 roku pracując w Oxfordzie a termin painism w
1990r. Jest przewodniczącym Animal Interfaith Alliance (AIA) i przewodniczącym Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).