Hog Heaven: A Comparison of Death in Human and Non-Human Animals

Abstract

My senior honors thesis in philosophy investigates questions of how we ought to assess the harmfulness (or lack thereof) of death for those who have died. Specifically, I consider two hypothetical yet plausible case studies. One involves the death of a cow and the other the death of a human. I first establish that for the dead cow, being dead cannot be harmful to her. I next argue in favor of the claim that the same assessment holds for the dead human in the second case study. I argue against human exceptionalism insofar as it could provide an explanation of how the death of the cow in the first case study and the death of the human in the second case study amount to one individual being harmed by their own death while the other is not. In doing so, I end up defending an Epicurean, anti-speciesist account of death. In closing, I evaluate how the conclusions reached via the two case studies could inform real-world decisions regarding how we treat individuals in life-or-death situations. I particularly emphasize the importance of my findings in the context of caring for non-human animals.