The Capacity for Suffering and Enjoyment Is a Prerequisite for Having

Essay

The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to say that a
being has interests - at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suffering. A mouse, for example, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is.^[1]
[Therefore, a being has interests that deserve consideration if, but only if, it has the capacity for suffering and enjoyment. Since many non-human animals have this capacity, they have interests that deserve consideration.]