Thatmightwellbethoughtenoughtosettlethematter;but
onemoreobjectionneedstobeconsidered.Humanbeingsin
pain, after all, have one behavioral sign that nonhuman
animals donot have:a developed language.Other animals
maycommunicatewitheachother,butnot,itseems,inthe
complicated way we do. Some philosophers, including
Descartes,havethoughtitimportantthatwhilehumanscan
telleachotherabouttheirexperienceofpainingreatdetail,
otheranimalscannot.(Interestingly,thisonceneatdividing
line between humans and other species has now been
threatened by the discovery that chimpanzees
canbetaughtalanguage.^12 )ButasBenthampointedoutlong
ago,theabilitytouselanguageisnotrelevanttothequestion
ofhowabeingoughttobetreated—unlessthatabilitycanbe
linked to the capacity to suffer, so that the absence of a
language casts doubt on the existence of this capacity.
Thislinkmaybeattemptedintwoways.First,thereisahazy
line of philosophicalthought, deriving perhaps from some
doctrinesassociatedwiththeinfluentialphilosopherLudwig
Wittgenstein, whichmaintainsthatwecannot meaningfully
attributestatesofconsciousnesstobeingswithoutlanguage.
Thispositionseems tomeveryimplausible.Languagemay
benecessaryforabstractthought,atsomelevelanyway;but
stateslikepainaremoreprimitive,andhavenothingto do
with language.
The second and more easily understood way of linking
language and the existenceof painis to say that thebest
evidencewecanhavethatothercreaturesareinpainisthat
theytellusthattheyare.Thisisadistinctlineofargument,
for it is denying not that non-language-users conceivably
could suffer, but only that we could ever have sufficient