How Much Does Suffering Matter?

Abstract

Ethicists frequently suppose that suffering has special moral significance. It is often claimed that a main goal of medicine-perhaps its primary goal-is the alleviation of human suffering. Following Eric Cassell and others, this essay considers suffering understood as the experience of distress-negative emotions-in response to threats to something that one cares about. It examines whether, on this value-based account of suffering, we should accept the claim that suffering has special moral significance. It argues that we should not: suffering does not add significantly to the value of other human interests and rarely changes our moral obligations itself; it merely seems to have strong moral relevance because it often attends to interests that matter. This is because negative emotions themselves have only limited moral significance, which is due to the fact that their primary mental role is to indicate to us the relative importance of non-emotional goods.