PHIL 213: Communicating Moral Issues

Dr. Brissey
Carruthers’ “Brute Experience” Speech Outline

Title: Animal Non-Conscious Pain

Specific Purpose Statement: By the end of my speech, the audience will understand Carruthers’
argument that animals do not feel pain, at least, not the type that is of moral concern.
Thesis Statement: Carruthers argues that animals experience non-conscious pain that is not
morally relevant to ethical questions concerning animal experimentation and factory-farming
practices.

Introduction
Alistair Norcross describes a character named Fred that tortures puppies for the sake of his
gustatory pleasure. As this story is commonly read and presented in philosophy classrooms, it
arouses sympathy and compassion for dogs; his readers notice immediately that torture,
especially of puppies, is morally wrong and should be stopped. Nevertheless, one quickly learns
that the similar activities occur in factory-farms, and that most people, in some sense, participate
in such torture. One way out of this dilemma, though, perhaps a longshot, is posed by Peter
Carruthers’ claim that torture of animals is not a morally relevant reason to stop eating meat
because animals do not have phenomenological experiences or feel pain.

(Transition: I will explain Carruthers’ argument, and you decide whether it is plausible.) Commented [BP1]:

Body
I. What is a non-conscious experience?
A. A non-conscious experience is one where the agent is not aware but participates in
behaviors as if aware.
B. There are cases where people non-consciously drive home, avoiding cars and other objects.
C. There are also instances where people non-consciously wash dishes, avoiding cups and
other objects.
D. There further are instances of blindsight where lesions on the brain result in one losing all
consciousness of part the visual field. Nevertheless, such individuals can guess the
orientation of objects and can grab such objects.

(Transition: With a general idea of non-conscious experiences, now let’s turn to what
consciousness is)

II. Carruthers’ has a higher-order (reflexive) definition of consciousness.

A. A conscious mental state is one that is available to conscious thought—where a conscious
act of thinking is an event that is capable of being thought about.
1. On this view, the following is a conscious thought: Nirit sees the tower in the distance,
and, further, he is capable of thinking about his vision of the tower in the distance.
2. Similarly, from Descartes’ observation of a ball of wax, he knows that he is viewing
colors and that he is thinking.
 3. What would not count as a conscious experience is one where there is no
phenomenological content—first-person perceptions of colors, sounds, etc.—that may
serve as content for a thought about the experience.
B. Conscious experiences are capable of description and, thus, in some degree, are connected
to language.
1. Our observations are capable of being thought about, described in language, and
analyzed.
2. Some observations may not be analyzable; say, the observation of a bright red color in
the sky when the sun is setting.
C. Carruthers’ account of consciousness also explains non-conscious experience.
1. Let’s begin with his examples. Although some sort of information was made available to
enable one to drive home and wash the dishes, the visual information was not available
as an object of conscious. One cannot reflect on the experiences; thus, they are non-
conscious.
2. Similarly, the case of blindsight produces information to insure successful behaviors
(e.g. grabbing an object), but the information is not rich or have phenomenological
content. For this reason, these experiences are non-conscious.
D. Carruthers assumes that no one would hold that dogs, cats, sheep, cattle, pigs, or
chickens consciously think things to themselves. What makes Carruthers’ case a bit more
plausible is that our first-person experiences are private, and there is no empirical way of
knowing whether animals have phenomenological, first-person experiences.

(Transition: For Carruthers, non-conscious experiences are possible, and animals are not
conscious. The questions is whether they experience pain.)

III. Non-conscious pain is theoretically possible, but should not result in sympathy or moral
concern.
A. There are instances of brief moments where people appear to feel pain but, oddly enough,
report that they do not.
1. A soldier severely burns his hand from the immense heat of the barrel of his gun. He
reports that he felt nothing. Nevertheless, it is observed that he motions his hand as if
he experiences pain.
2. This experience, Carruthers tells us, should not engender sympathy or concern for the
soldier, for he did not experience pain.
3. This case of non-conscious pain, however, is rare and is controversial.
B. There are close instances and logically possible cases of non-conscious pain that is similar
to blindsight; that is, instances where one experiences the full range of pain behavior, but
the subject is not conscious of pain.
1. Human pain, Carruthers tells us, is mediated through two types of nerve: the “new
path” nerve designates the location of the pain while the “old path” stimulates the
need to stop to pain.
2. Some have shown that types of morphine can slow down the activity of the old path
while not altering the new path. The result is that the patient experiences pain but, oddly
enough, has no desire to stop it.
3. What is needed is a drug that slows the new path while not altering the old path. This
will eliminate the experience of pain. This, however, is unlikely because the new path
 nerve does not have a central location in the higher cortex of the brain but is spread in a
complex way across the higher cortex.
4. We can imagine, however, a logically possible (hypothetical) scenario where Mary is
not conscious of pain, but instinctually acts as if she experiences pain when an injury
occurs. This is a physically possible case of non-conscious pain.
C. Animals are not conscious (see III.D.) and do not experience pain; thus, they experience
non-conscious pain. One observes pain-like behaviors, but the animal does not
experience pain because animals are not conscious. Since animals do not experience pain,
we should not have moral concern for animal suffering.

Conclusion
Carruthers argues that animals do not feel pain. He provides intuitive cases of non-conscious
human experiences, and then provides a reflexive definition of consciousness. He tells us that
most animals cannot participate in reflexive thoughts, and thus have non-conscious experiences,
which entails that they experience non-conscious pains. He, further, tells us that these pains are
not the type that garner moral sympathies. He concludes: “[…] there is no moral criticism to be
leveled at the majority of people who are indifferent to the pains of factory-farmed animals,
which they know to exist but do not themselves observe” (Carruthers 515).

Bibliography

Carruthers, Peter, “Brute Experience,” The Journal of Philosophy, LXXXVI, 5 (May 1989): 505-
516. Print.