Pros And Cons Of Tra For Animals

TRIA has been criticised in its account of the badness of death for both human and non-human animals. Generally, the main criticism has been that the time-relative interests are not relevant to establish the badness of death. Speaking about human beings, Bradley (XXXX, xxx-xxx) has criticised the idea that death is less bad for babies and gets worse as one ages. Bradley advocates for measuring the amount of good lost in a way that accounts for the whole life of the victim, disregarding psychological connectedness. Hence, given a similar amount of well-being during both lives, the death of Baby would be a greater loss than the death of Young. Additionally, Harman (XXXX) has criticised the application of TRIA to animals. To be specific, she has argued against the claim that death can be a misfortune for animals, but only a minor one. This leads her to reject McMahan's conclusion that suffering is worse than death for animals, but not for humans1.

Even if these criticisms offer valuable counter points to TRIA, I will not examine them here. Although I am not sure which is the right account of the badness of death, I consider TRIA to be one of the main contenders. Contrary to many
This leads him to argue that the death of a fetus or a newborn baby is worse than the death of an adult animal, regardless of their level of psychological connectedness. Note, therefore, that this last claim is not supported in TRIA itself, but in value judgements about the value of animal life. However, are these value judgements sufficiently justified? I will argue that, while TRIA offers a plausible and coherent account of the badness of death, McMahan fails to adequately support his statements about the value of non-human