The seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes solved it by the drastic expedient of denying that animals can suffer. Animals, he maintained, are merely ingenious mechanisms, and we should not take their cries and struggles as a sign of pain, any more than we take the sound of an alarm clock as a sign that it has consciousness.
在更早的年代里，当原罪被比以现在更严肃的态度来看待的时候，动物遭遇的不幸对擅于思考的基督徒来说是一个非常困难的问题。十七世纪法国哲学家勒奈·笛卡尔通过强烈否认动物能感觉痛苦这样一个权宜之计来解决这个问题。他认为动物只是机灵的机械装置，我们不应该把它们的嚎叫和挣扎视为痛苦的表现，就像我们不应该把闹钟的响声作为闹钟有意识的表现一样。但是，和狗或猫一起生活的人不大可能认为这个观点具有说服力。