If we are to meet our duty of care to other sentient animals, we must try to get inside their heads. In pursuit of my central aim, ‘Understanding sentient minds’ I have done my best to look at life as seen through their eyes (and other special senses) and how these impressions and images will direct behaviour necessary to cope with challenges to their welfare. In this study, I have sought to distinguish between instinctive responses built into their birthright and those that reveal properties of a sentient mind that can not only experience emotions of suffering and pleasure but also, to a greater or lesser extent, understand them.

I now address the second clause in my title ‘Why it matters’. We must address the evidence that our fellow mortals are, in the elegant words of Judith Benz‐Schwarzburg and Andrew Knight, our ‘cognitive relations yet moral strangers’ (5). As in my first animal welfare book, ‘A Cool Eye towards Eden’, I take as my inspiration the words of Robert Burns. ‘I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion, has broken Nature’s Social Union, and justifies that ill opinion, which makes thee startle, at me, thy poor earth‐bound companion, an’ fellow mortal.’ He expresses true compassion at destroying her nest: ‘that wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble, has cost thee monie a weary nibble’ but is equally aware that he cannot stop the plough for he too ‘maun live’. I repeat what I wrote then. ‘We have dominion over the animals whether we like it or not’. If we are to do right by them, we need to examine our own attitudes and especially our behaviour through their eyes. It is of no real consequence to them what we think, it is what we do that matters.

The first step towards proper recognition of animals as fellow mortals is to acknowledge that we share the properties of a sentient mind. Whatever we might think, we are all driven primarily by complex feelings. To meet our duty of care, we must do more than attend to their obvious physical and behavioural needs, we must address our thoughts and feelings to the way they think and feel. For those animals not directly in our care but for whom we bear responsibility as stewards of the living environment, we must take their thoughts and feelings into account in any strategy for environmental management and population control. Specific strategies may range from actions designed to conserve an endangered species to a policy of population control for a species that is endangering its own welfare by exceeding the provisions of its habitat. In all cases, we should aim for a just balance between potential harms and benefits for them and us.

The pursuit of justice for animals requires us to adapt the principles of Hobbes social union (or social contract) for human society to incorporate not just sentient animals but all life. Humans in the social union include those directly involved as, for example, farmers or pet owners, and those indirectly involved as consumers of animal produce or competitors for habitat: in short, everybody. Animals in the social union include those directly under our care and those for whom we have no legal duty of care but who are, nevertheless, within our dominion because we have so much influence over where and how they live. The third involved party includes everything else that contributes to the quality and sustainability of the living environment, the plants, the water, the soil, the air.

A modern, democratic interpretation of Hobbes’ concept of the social contract would state that the quality of life for all individuals depends on our commitment to life in an ordered, fair and functional society where each individual has a responsibility to contribute to the general welfare and accept some restrictions on personal freedom. This is often interpreted as respect for equal rights. I steer clear of the debate on animal rights for the good reason that it is a debate carried out entirely among humans; our fellow mortals are outside the room. In any ethical analysis of our relations with sentient animals and the living environment, we must make a distinction between Moral Agents, the humans who make the decisions, and Moral Patients, the animals and the living environment whose wellbeing and autonomy are affected by our decisions. We have a responsibility to them, but they have no responsibility to us. In this sense, they are like newborn babies.

Sentience Revisited

At this stage, I think it would be helpful to recapitulate my approach to the understanding of animal sentience according to the five circles (skandhas) of Buddhist philosophy, which describes all animals as sentient but some more sentient than others (see Figure 2.1). I argue that the five skandhas create a practical, scientifically valid set of categories into which we can put different, more or less complex properties of mind revealed from observation of animal behaviour and motivation to behaviour. I must concede, however, that these divisions are not clear‐cut and, in many cases, we have too little understanding of animal minds to conclude with any certainty which properties of sentience can be attributed to which species.

According to the Buddhist skandhas, the outer circle of sentience is Matter, a property of all lifeforms, plants and animals. It embraces the ability to respond to signals such as light, temperature and the physical properties of the immediate environment of air, land or water. The principle of respect for life requires that matter (as defined by the skandhas) matters. If we take this for granted, the pragmatic next question becomes; ‘How much does it matter’? At this point, ethical purists may charge me with the sin of moral relativism, but so be it. It matters because our privileged position as stewards commits us to do the best we can, to ensure the survival, complexity and beauty of the living world. In this context, the best advice must be, wherever possible, leave it alone. This does not mean that we are obliged to strive to keep every living thing alive for as long as possible. However well meaning that, would be catastrophic.

The second level is Sensation. Animals who demonstrate the property of sensation but no more recognise and respond in a simple, instinctive way to signals that affect body functions essential for genetic fitness, i.e. survival and reproduction. These include the primitive sensations of pain (defined in this context as nociception), malaise (the sensation of feeling ill), hunger, and sex. All of these can be said to have an emotional content (feeling good or feeling bad) and can be a powerful motivating force for action; sex being the obvious example. I suggest that at this level the emotional responses to these sensations are entirely, or almost entirely instinctive and involve little, if any, thought. However, animals do not need to think about these sensations or express chronic anxiety at the possibility of their recurrence in order to experience distress when they occur. The property of sensation alone is sufficient to give animals protection under the UK Scientific Procedures Act (24). More on this later.

In almost all the animal species whose lives are affected by human contact, the expression of sentience is not limited to primitive sensation. The rules that govern our moral duty to respect their welfare must take account of biological evidence as to the extent to which they demonstrate the three inner circles of sentience, namely perception, mental formulation and consciousness. These are summarised in Table 11.1.

Animals that possess the property of perception do more than operate according to instinctive patterns of stimulus and response. They develop their minds. This involves not only the recognition and identification of good and bad sensations but also the capacity to remember the association between physical and social messages leading to feelings such as pain, fear, hunger, comfort and security. This enables them to develop learned responses calculated to avoid future suffering and promote wellbeing. This increases their ability to mount an effective immediate response and improves the chances of doing things better next time. It also carries the potential to increase distress and anxiety if they learn that they cannot cope.

The properties of sentience described within (and limited to) circles two and three, sensation and perception, can be strictly linked to the genetic imperative to survive and reproduce, which means that they are entirely motivated by self‐interest (or the interests of eight second cousins). Perception, defined here as a category of sentience, is more advanced than sensation because it involves learning, i.e. development of the mind. However, possession of (only) circles two and three does not admit any of the higher feelings or social graces. It has been relatively easy to demonstrate the property of perception, in its most primitive form, from simple laboratory experiments. Pavlov’s classic conditioned response trials with dogs and bells, did no more than establish the link between perception of a conditioning stimulus (the bell) and salivation, the unconscious response to the arrival of food. Most of the animals I have discussed in this book can do better than this. Even Burns, for all his compassion for the startled mouse failed to grasp the nature of perception as defined here. For thou art blessed, compared with me. The present only touches thee.’ Animals with the power of perception do not just live in the present. They remember, and this memory has long‐term effects on their minds. If they learn to cope, they achieve an enhanced sense of wellbeing. If they discover that they cannot cope because they do not have the tools to cope or are so restricted that that they cannot make use of the tools at hand, they will suffer.

The fourth circle of sentience is defined as mental formulation: the ability to create mental pictures, or diagrams, that integrate and interpret complex information, experiences, sensations and emotions. Cognitive skills operating at this level include what behaviourists refer to as spatial awareness, an expression that rather belittles the amazing mapmaking skills of species like pigeons, horses, wildebeest and elephants. While much of the navigational equipment for long‐distance migration in birds and marine animals is instinctive, the ability of the animals quoted above to carry within their minds detailed maps of areas extending to thousands of square kilometres exceeds anything you or I could manage. What these skills have in common is that they are skills that matter. They are critical to survival. In these migrant species, mental development has focused on mapmaking, probably to the exclusion of much else.

Possession of the capacity to construct complex mental formulations can have a profound impact on the emotional state and thereby the welfare of sentient animals in ways that can be good or bad. This property is particularly well developed (because it matters) in species that establish social relationships and form a society, like wolves, chimpanzees, and elephants, as distinct from animals like fish that just go around in large groups. Animals with the capacity to make complex mental formulations learn ways to distinguish between risks that are real and apparent, keep out of trouble, acquire an education, adapt to the demands of society, and thereby contribute to the mores of a culture. The emotional rewards accruing from this degree of mental development include, at least, a heightened sense of security and, at best, the pleasure to be gained from a life among friends. The downside of the property of mental formulation includes chronic feelings of anxiety or depression in animals that discover they are unable to cope with physical stresses like chronic pain or emotional stresses like bullying or isolation. It also includes grief at the loss of a friend or relative, although, at this level, it may have to be defined as a sense of personal loss, rather than compassion.

According to the skandhas, the word consciousness is restricted to properties within the final, deepest circle of sentience. As I wrote in Chapter 2, this is a difficult concept that can mean different things to different people. In psychology, it is used to describe the property of mind that can be pronounced most simply as the awareness of self and non‐self. By this definition, conscious individuals are not only aware of the world around them but aware of the existence of themselves and others around them as distinct individuals with unique personalities, each with their own set of thoughts and feelings. The emotions made possible at this level of sentience include empathy, altruism and compassion, expressed, for example, in the form of affiliative behaviour: giving comfort and support to a neighbour in distress with no expectation of personal gain. This awareness of self and non‐self (metarepresentation, or theory of mind, [22]) also has its selfish side. In human society, criminal fraud is based on getting into the minds of groups or individuals identified as vulnerable and bending their minds to your will.

These manifestations of the sense of awareness of self and non‐self are thought by many to be unique to humans, although not necessarily all humans. It is argued that individuals with severe autism lack this property so are simply unaware of the feelings of others (51). The number of species for which we have good evidence for theory of mind is limited and has been largely restricted to social mammals e.g. great apes and dolphins, but the list is growing. It should probably include social corvids, e.g. rooks, (13) and possibly some invertebrates, e.g. squid and other cephalopods (69). Our duty to social species with these powers requires us to understand their need to communicate and respond appropriately to their social signals. However, I repeat what I wrote in Chapter 2. Animals do not need to display the deepest circle of sentience in order to suffer pain and distress, or experience comfort and joy. Moreover, they do not need to display the deepest circle of sentience to command our respect.

Outcome‐based Ethics

I wrote at the outset, and I say it again: loving animals is not enough. If we are to do right by them, we need to understand them. On the other hand, loving animals can be too much. Our respect for the ‘rights’ of sentient animals has to be placed within the context of our own legitimate needs. This calls for some ethical decisions. For most of history, moral philosophy, or the study of ethics, has concerned itself exclusively with people. This anthropocentric tunnel vision was challenged by Albert Schweitzer, who wrote “Ethics is nothing other than Reverence for Life. Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil.” (10)

If we are to adapt principles of ethics within human society into humane and effective action in respect to sentient animals, we need some ground rules. As with all sciences, ethics may be divided into the pure and the applied. Pure ethics is top‐down. It asks the question ‘Which general moral norms for the guidance of moral behaviour should we accept and why?’ The aim of this approach is to justify moral norms. This is a worthy pursuit but one that may have little impact on the behaviour of society at large. Applied ethics is bottom‐up, a more pragmatic business that begins with life as it is. It identifies a specific practical issue then constructs an analysis of relevant moral issues by a process of induction. Beauchamp and Childress proposed a practical, bottom‐up approach to problems in medical ethics in the form of an ‘Ethical Matrix’ built on three aims of common morality, to promote wellbeing, autonomy and justice (2). This has been adapted by Mepham to consider issues relating to our treatment of the food animals (52).

Two key principles of ethics are Utilitarianism and Deontology. Utilitarianism is based on the principle of beneficence (‘do good’), and non‐maleficence (‘do no harm’) to promote the wellbeing of the greatest number. This principle has obvious relevance to our approach to animals other than pets because we have little option other than to consider them en masse. Utilitarianism has become a rather discredited concept in human philosophy because, considered in isolation, it neglects the rights of the individual. In the context of our contract with animals it isn’t enough either. Philosophers describe our duty to respect individual rights as deontology, the science of duty, from the Greek deon (duty) and logos (science). It calls on us to respect the autonomy of all other individuals to those elements of wellbeing and freedom of choice that we might wish for ourselves and is most simply expressed as ‘do as you would be done by’. If we are to apply the practical principles of bottom‐up ethics, we cannot label ourselves as utilitarians or deontologists. We need to do both.

In recent years, it has become the custom to devise strategies for the promotion of health, safety and wellbeing in humans and other animals based on measures of outcomes rather than provisions: i.e. we measure the goodness of our actions by how well they work. This is a practical step in the right direction since outcomes are what matter. Outcome measures for the principles of utilitarianism and deontology are, respectively, the wellbeing of the population and the autonomy of each individual. The two outcome‐based measures of wellbeing and autonomy as applied to all parties determine the third outcome‐measure, justice. Justice demands that we, the moral agents, should seek a fair and humane compromise between what we take to meet our needs for food, sport, companionship, health and safety, scientific understanding, and what we give in terms of good husbandry, defined by competent, humane and sustainable action, for all life that comes within our dominion. This is not the same thing as giving all parties equal rights and will always fall short of the aspiration to seek total justice. It is an unavoidably distorted expression of Thomas Hobbes view of the Social Contract where individuals consent to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to an authority in exchange for protection of remaining rights and the maintenance of social order. In the early days of domestication, it may be argued that wolves consented to give up some of their freedoms in order to derive the benefits of living among humans. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the farmed animals consented to becoming food. However, it is, in my opinion, valid to argue that, on good farms with good husbandry, quality of life for the animals (while it lasts), when measured in terms of sustenance, comfort, companionship and security can be as good as, or even better than life in the wild.