Argumentative Essay: The Case Of Non-Human Death

Some philosophers defend that the badness of death depends on the frustration of desires, that is, death can be a misfortune due to the closure of possible future desire satisfaction. Commonly, these theories rest on a desire based theory of value. However, this alone should not make a difference in the case of non-human death, as they too have desires or preferences. Although some authors deny the possibility that animals can have desires at all (a position that I will discuss later); for now, I will assume the relatively uncontroversial idea that non-human animals can hold desires for goods such as food, warmth, and companionship. If this is the case, death can thwart these desires, and therefore dying can be a misfortune for the animal.
Arguably, the victim has a higher number of preferences frustrated and, additionally, thee preferences where more significant to the person's life. Yet, this does not mean, by itself, that the rest of the preferences are irrelevant. Two possible arguments are possible for the defendant of Singer's proposal. First, it could be argued that the type of desires non-persons hold are too short-lived to make any real difference in the badness of death. Not only are their preferences limited to short term activities, but they also hold them for limited time. It has been argued, for example, that the desires of animals disappear after sleeping. This would imply that if you kill them in their sleep, you would not frustrate any preferences. Nevertheless, this objection appears to ignore the relevance of dispositional desires, that is, certain things that are desired in general, such as warmth, company or food. Secondly, it could be the case that, if one does not hold preferences for its life as a whole, death does not frustrate any preferences and therefore, it is not harmful. If preferences are the measure of value, and S does not have a preference for its life as a whole, it would seem that S does not lose any value by dying. This argumentation, however, is flawed. As Singer himself recognizes, non-persons may lose the pleasurable experiences in their life. It is reasonable to postulate that some of these experiences will have corresponding preferences. Surely, some of these preferences will be negative and will therefore be cancelled by death, such as the desire of not being hungry or the desire of not being in pain. Nonetheless, some of this preferences will be positive: a pig may want to bath in the mud, a hen may desire to build a nest. And these preferences do not disappear with death, but will be frustrated. Furthermore, being alive is instrumental