Can Animals Have Meaningful Lives?

Recently, several philosophers have suggested that not only humans can have meaningful lives. By this they don't only mean that the lives and well-being of animals are important and so we shouldn't harm them. The claim about animals and meaning in life is more ambitious: It is that just as we often hold that some peoples' lives are meaningful, we should accept that some animals' lives are so.

For example, Duncan Purves and Nicolas Delon (2018) suggest that a dog that cares for her pups, or for the person she accompanies, can have a meaningful life. Such a dog, they suggest, has intentions, acts on these intentions, and does so in effortful ways. Likewise, Joshua Lewis Thomas (2018) points out that dogs (and other animals) significantly benefit other beings (including people), and argues that this suffices to make their lives meaningful.

The suggestion that animals have meaningful lives has been criticized by Thaddeus Metz (2019). Metz points out, first, that claims such as Purves and Delon's or Thomas's imply that forcing an animal to do good to humans by, e.g., whipping it, would make that animal’s life meaningful. This, however, seems highly counterintuitive.

As Metz notes, supporters of the view that animals can have meaningful lives may reply that they are discussing only cases in which animals benefit others without being forced to do so. However, this will severely limit the number of cases in which animals can be taken to have meaningful lives. It is also unclear whether, for example, a dog who was trained to care for a blind person is operating independently.

Metz presents two more reasons for doubting that animals have meaningful lives. The first is that although (some) animals can have intentions, act on these intentions, do so in effortful ways, and benefit others, there are many other qualities we often associate with having meaningful lives that most, or all, animals do not show.

Among other qualities, animals cannot “discover fundamental truths about themselves or their environment; compose poetry; appreciate music; tell jokes; do what it takes to become an Olympic athlete; avoid a repetitive existence; redeem bad parts of their lives by making good come from them; strive to have their lives end on a high note” (Metz 2019, 407). One might add to this list innovative creativity, autonomous behavior, and mystical experiences.

Metz's second reason for doubting that animals have meaningful lives is that when interacting with animals we usually don’t try to enhance meaning in their lives for their own sake. In contrast, we do see people’s meaning in life as an end in itself: We may well find ourselves trying to enhance the meaningfulness of other people’s lives just so that they’ll have more meaningful lives, with no ulterior motive. Many of us would do this for our family members, friends, or students. But we usually don’t try to enhance animals’ ability to have intentions, act on these intentions, do so in effortful ways, and benefit others, for the sake of the animals. Pet owners sometimes do try to enhance the pleasure, health, and well-being of their pets for the pets’ own sake. But even pet owners do not try to enhance for the pets’ own sake the qualities that Purves and Delon, or Thomas, focus on as making animals’ lives meaningful.

I agree with Metz that it is problematic to see animals as having meaningful lives as this notion is usually understood. If we do take animals’ lives to be meaningful, we should—as Metz suggests—understand this meaningfulness as quite different from the type of meaningfulness we find in humans. Of course, all this doesn't imply that we may treat animals badly, or that their lives and well-being aren’t important. We can care for and appreciate animals’ lives while holding that they are not meaningful, or are not so in the way human lives are.