Is There Really a Problem?: The Challenge of Neo-Cartesianism

The problem of animal pain, as I have formulated it, entails that there are a significant number of animals that suffer in a morally significant way. Though that suffering was defined quite broadly, physical pain has for most constituted the crux of animal suffering. But, of course, purely physical pain is very rare. When you are in “physical” pain, it is how much you don’t like it that is the real problem, and that is a psychological state. The two may come apart in theory, but rarely in practice. Some theorists would deny the very existence of a significant portion of the data the problem of animal pain stems from. If there is no problem worth considering, then there is no sense in strenuously seeking a solution. If there are not data crying out for an explanation, it is a waste of time to carefully craft one. In this chapter, after some epistemological prolegomena, I consider a prominent attempt to deny the data.