Should We Try to Relieve Clear Cases of Suffering in Nature?

Abstract

Welfare biology is the study of living things and their environment with respect to their welfare (defi ned as net happi-ness, or enjoyment minus suff ering). Despite diffi culties of ascertaining and measuring welfare and relevancy to nor-mative issues, welfare biology is a positive science. Evolutionary economics and population dynamics are used to helpanswer basic questions in welfare biology: Which species are aff ective sentients capable of welfare? Do they enjoy pos-itive or negative welfare? Can their welfare be dramatically increased? Under plausible axioms, all conscious speciesare plastic and all plastic species are conscious (and, with a stronger axiom, capable of welfare). More complex nichesfavour the evolution of more rational species. Evolutionary economics also supports the common-sense view that indi-vidual sentients failing to survive to mate suff er negative welfare. A kind of God-made (or evolution-created) fairnessbetween species is also unexpectedly found. The contrast between growth maximization (as may be favoured by natu-ral selection), average welfare, and total welfare maximization is discussed. It is shown that welfare could be increasedwithout even sacrifi cing numbers (at equilibrium). Since the long-term reduction in animal suff ering depends on scien-tifi c advances, strict restrictions on animal experimentation may be counter-productive to animal welfare.