ABSTRACT
The British psychologist Richard D. Ryder (born 1940) is famous for his role as one of the pioneers of the modern animal liberation and animal rights movement. Ryder is well known for the introduction of new ethical ideas in the past 30 years and especially for coining of the term speciesism, which he rst used in a privately printed leaet in Oxford 1970 and then in many subsequent publications (1,2). In Cavalieri
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 183 “Can They Suffer?” ................................................................................................ 184 Ryder’s Painism: A Middle Way between the Scylla of Utilitarianism and the Charybdis of Rights Theory? ................................................................................. 185 Is Pain Necessary or Sufcient for Moral Status? ................................................. 186 Painism and Sentientism ........................................................................................ 187 Hurting and Harming ............................................................................................. 188 Pain-The Only Evil? ............................................................................................ 188 Pain in Nonhuman Others: Speciesism-Normative and Descriptive Dimensions ............................................................................................................ 189 Species, Individuals, and Pain ................................................................................ 190 Painism-Some Applications and Questions ......................................................... 191
Painism and Biotechnology ............................................................................... 191 Painism and Environmental Ethics.................................................................... 191 Painism and Plants ............................................................................................ 192 Painism and Euthanasia ..................................................................................... 192 Brain, Pain, Persistent Vegetative State, and Extreme Cases ............................ 193
Who Is the “Maximum Sufferer?” ......................................................................... 194 Concerning the “Vegetative Language” about Human Beings beyond Sentience and Pain ............................................................................................ 195
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 196 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. 197 References .............................................................................................................. 197
and Singer’s “Great Ape Project” and other papers, Ryder argued for Sentientism (2) against the leading moral concepts emphasizing that only the capacity to feel pain is morally relevant. In 1990 Ryder coined the term Painism to describe “A Modern Morality” (3-5). For Ryder, pain is always pain of an individual and cannot be aggregated. Painism argues not only against the traditional anthropocentric personism based on qualia of persons like consciousness, intelligence, or rationality (e.g., Kant) but also against modern utilitarianism (6,7) and against an animal rights position based on an inherent value of each individual (8). Ryder, Singer, and Regan try to integrate pain into their ethical concepts in different ways. They all criticize the speciesism of traditional ethics and try to extend their approach to general ethics and politics.
