An entity cannot have a will to have or do something that it cannot experience.

Only sentient
beings can satisfy this requirement. They have a will to live because staying alive grants
them the possibility of experiencing the positive benefits that life can bring. In this sense,
merely being alive is not sufficient for having a will to live. The capacity to have positive and
negative experiences (i.e., sentience) is also a necessary condition.
But if conscious experiences are not available for non-sentient living entities, in what way, if
any, can they have a “good of their own?” It seems that in order for an entity to have a good
of its own, it needs a capacity that allows it to experience life in a positive or negative way.
Non-sentient entities cannot have a good of their own because things cannot be good (or
bad) for them at all.
It may still be argued that even if they are not aware of it, all entities have a good of their
own. The good for a living entity would be to fully develop and flourish as a biological
organism, even if the entity cannot experience it.
However, if an entity cannot experience its own good, how can this good be its own? It
seems rather that its own good is being determined by something other than what is
beneficial for that entity. For example, some people may consider that, because of its impact
on the ecosystem or on the beauty of the landscape, the flourishing of a living entity (e.g., a
tree) is instrumentally good, but this does not mean it is intrinsically good. Non-sentient
beings can’t be benefited or harmed any more than non-living things can be. Just because it
is good that I am fixing a table, it does not mean that the table is being benefited or having
good done to it.
Likewise, though there may be a good in keeping a tree alive, it cannot be inferred that the
tree has a good of its own in being alive. Therefore, because being alive does not give living
things a will to live or a good of their own—only sentience can do this—respect for all forms
of life based on simply being alive must be rejected.
Biocentrism is unacceptable given the conflicts of interest it generates
The criterion of being alive is satisfied not only by animals and plants, but also by bacteria
and other microorganisms. Thus, conflicts of interests between all the different forms of life
would be permanent. Washing your hands or putting alcohol on a wound would be highly
problematic, since doing so would imply disregarding the lives of an enormous number of
living microorganisms.
But most importantly, if we accept the biocentric criteria, we are committed to deciding in
ways that most people, considering different moral criteria, would find unacceptable. This is
the case, for example, of those who think respect should be given to sentient beings, that is,
those beings with the capacity to experience wellbeing.
Imagine an animal facing a bacterial infection. The bacteria reproduce quickly in the body
and cause a serious illness. There is an effective treatment available with antibiotics;
however, the ethical committee of the hospital has adopted the biocentric criteria, according
to which the bacteria should be favored over the animal. This means the infection will not be
treated, since it implies a massive killing, and the animal will be left to suffer until he dies
from the infection.
If we think all forms of life should be respected just because they are alive, we should not
object to the decision of the ethical committee. In fact, we should applaud it. If, on the
contrary, we think the animal’s interests should weigh in the decision, such that his suffering
and death should be avoided, then we are already moving away from biocentrism. We are
acknowledging that life itself is not a sufficient criterion for moral consideration.
Biocentrism is subordinated to anthropocentrism
The inadequacy of the biocentric criteria can be clearly observed when we consider their
bearing on human interests. Imagine that the infected animal in the biocentrist hospital is a
human animal. If the biocentric criteria apply to nonhumans, they should also apply to
human beings. After all, what should determine having respect towards a being is the fact
that it is alive, regardless of the species to which it belongs. Therefore, according to
biocentrism, we should favor the multitude of bacteria over the human being. And not just in
this particular case, but every time there is a conflict of human interests with the interests of
other living things and the latter numerically predominates over the former.
Most people would probably find this conclusion nonsensical. In fact, most supporters of
biocentrism reject this.4 What they support, rather, is a combination of a biocentric criterion
with an anthropocentric one. From this position would follow a complex prescription such
that we should respect all forms of life except in those circumstances in which doing so
implies the frustration of significant human interests.
Providing a sound justification for this prescription proves extremely difficult. It is not possible
to consistently combine biocentrism with the exceptionality of human interests without
appealing to other moral criteria. However, appealing to other morally relevant criteria (e.g.,
sentience) would suppose the consideration of other nonhuman beings that also satisfy the
criteria. If human interests trump biocentric criteria, then nonhuman interests also trump it.
Rejecting this implication is an unjustified subordination of biocentrism to anthropocentrism.
As the section on the arguments against speciesism shows, anthropocentrism is an
unjustified form of discrimination that we must reject. This, in addition to the arguments for
the relevance of sentience, shows why biocentrism must be rejected.
Why the combination of biocentrism with other criteria must be rejected
It may be argued that a possible biocentric position that would avoid these objections would
consist of a view that considered all living entities but gave special consideration to sentient
ones. However, this would not, strictly speaking, be a view we can accurately call
“biocentrism.” There is no way in which biocentrism can prescribe special attention to the
interests of sentient beings, since biocentrism is just about being alive. Rather, this view
would be a combination of biocentrism and other criteria, such as sentience.
The relevance of being sentient does not make a view that considers both biocentrism and
sentience acceptable. As we have seen above, the mere fact of being alive does not mean
that one has interests. Our lives are valuable to us because they allow us to have positive
experiences, but if that possibility were completely ruled out, our lives would cease to have
any value for us. Biocentrism fails for this reason.
As shown, the combination of biocentrism with the consideration of sentience cannot be a
sound position, since the combination of a view that is sound (the latter) with one that is not
(the former) renders the entire equation unsound. Accordingly, we should reject the pairing,
and taking into account the actual interests of all sentient individuals, accept the view that
sentience is the morally relevant criterion.

Further readings:
Agar, N. (1997) “Biocentrism and the concept of life”, Ethics, 108, pp. 147-168.
Agar, N. (2001) Life’s intrinsic value: Science, ethics, and nature, New York: Columbia
University Press.
Attfield, R. (1981) “The good of trees”, Journal of Value Inquiry, 15, pp. 35-54.
DesJardins, J. R. (2013 [1993]) Environmental ethics: An introduction to environmental
philosophy, 5th rev. ed., Boston: Wadsworth.
Himma, K. E. (2004) “Moral biocentrism and the adaptive value of consciousness”, Southern
Journal of Philosophy, 42, pp. 25-44.
Goodpaster, K. E. (1978) “On being morally considerable”, Journal of Philosophy, 75, pp.
308-325.
Taylor, P. (1983) “In defense of biocentrism”, Environmental Ethics, 5, pp. 237-243.

1 See for instance: Taylor, P. (1986) Respect for nature, Princeton: Princeton University
Press; Varner, G. (2002) “Biocentric individualism”, in Schmidtz, D. & Willot, E. (eds.)
Environmental ethics: What really matters, what really works, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, pp. 108-120.
2 Schweitzer, A. (1946 [1923]) Civilization and ethics, 3d ed., London: A. & C. Black.
3 Attfield, R. (1987) “Biocentrism, moral standing and moral significance”, Philosophica, 39,
pp. 47-58.
4 See for instance the works of Schweitzer, Attfield, or Varner cited above.