Concept
Suffering-focused ethics
Related concepts (4)
Wild animal suffering
Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, and killings by other animals, as well as psychological stress. Some estimates indicate that these individual animals make up the vast majority of animals in existence.
Negative utilitarianism
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering (negative utility or 'disutility') than to increasing pleasure (positive utility).
Antinatalism
Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the philosophical position that assigns a negative value judgement to birth and views procreation as immoral. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from procreating. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe reproduction is immoral. The most common arguments for antinatalism include: Life entails inevitable suffering. Death is inevitable. Humans (and all forms of life) are born without their consent—no one chooses whether or not they come into existence.
Suffering
Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, may be an experience of unpleasantness or aversion, possibly associated with the perception of harm or threat of harm in an individual. Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of affective phenomena. The opposite of suffering is pleasure or happiness. Suffering is often categorized as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and frequency of occurrence usually compound that of intensity.