tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post8226854228213706537..comments2023-05-28T17:47:26.943-07:00Comments on A Nice Place To Live: Possible Positions On Insect SufferingAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-7768666632163607742013-11-14T03:28:31.802-08:002013-11-14T03:28:31.802-08:00"Can you think of any real-life situation wit..."Can you think of any real-life situation with a conflict between mass insect wellbeing and mass human wellbeing in which you would choose the option that benefits the insects?"<br /><br />Tongue-in-cheek answer: Whether Michael works to promote humane insecticides or does more conventional human altruism. :)<br /><br />Seriously, though, the main conflicts are of this type. Reducing insect suffering doesn't hurt humans directly, but it's not a priority for most humans. I think it should be.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-51506152693889739122013-11-13T11:15:39.498-08:002013-11-13T11:15:39.498-08:00Can you think of any real-life situation with a co...Can you think of any real-life situation with a conflict between mass insect wellbeing and mass human wellbeing in which you would choose the option that benefits the insects?<br /><br />Preferably an example where something significant hangs in the balance for humans.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-11517879729520868322013-11-13T02:03:53.063-08:002013-11-13T02:03:53.063-08:00Getting concrete with numbers would help. If we ca...Getting concrete with numbers would help. If we can make a +1500 difference to a human and a +30 difference to an insect, this suggests insects should be very competitive. There may be <a href="http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/humane-insecticides.html" rel="nofollow">millions to tens of millions</a> of insects killed per hectare of crops sprayed with insecticides. If we reduced the painfulness of those deaths by just 10%, that's, say, +3 of value using the above numbers. Times a million, that's equivalent to 2000 humans with a +1500. Maybe the time period under consideration is different, but it seems hard to beat millions of insects having less awful deaths per hectare per spraying.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-23900594791754090582013-11-11T19:49:04.984-08:002013-11-11T19:49:04.984-08:00Maybe. I'm definitely not positing a threshold...Maybe. I'm definitely not positing a threshold that prevents those billion billion little pains from stacking up to surpass our 7 billion larger pains. I agree that someone could create a thought experiment where "saving the insects" trumps "saving the human." But I think the fact that more complicated animals can suffer even when they're not in pain means their sum total of suffering that can be resolved is probably higher.<br /><br />Also, I value jumps from average wellbeing to above average wellbeing as much as I value jumps from below average wellbeing to average wellbeing. Insects can't experience the full spectrum of positive emotions that humans can either.<br /><br />Since humans have a much greater capacity to experience the full effects of both elation and torture, much more utility hangs in the balance when we discuss human affairs. Humans can go from -1000 to +500, let's say, and insects can go from -25 to +5. In practice, I think there are very little scenarios where an Insect Rescue Mission will trump a Human Rescue Mission.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-21453905245412746562013-11-10T21:59:02.205-08:002013-11-10T21:59:02.205-08:00Surely the 10 mins of torture must be some nontriv...Surely the 10 mins of torture must be some nontrivial fraction as bad as a lifetime of PTSD afterward? This should at least put the immediate pain within a few orders of magnitude of the long-term pain, which is enough to get insects to dominate humans absent other mitigating factors like significant brain-complexity weighting.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-24484050532708215562013-11-09T06:19:56.179-08:002013-11-09T06:19:56.179-08:00Brian, is your view represented by any of the view...Brian, is your view represented by any of the views I listed? I think of you as 2d, leaning toward 3c.<br /><br />I think your description of Singer is represented here:<br /><br />2b: "Insects can feel pain and their pain is bad but their suffering fails to qualify as morally relevant due to the lack of some property P that allows them to suffer to the same extent humans can."<br /><br />= Insect pain is bad but doesn't fall into our sphere of equal consideration due to the lack of the property of personhood.<br /><br />Infants and disabled humans can be excluded from personhood but in real life, there are a lot of other reasons to prioritize them over other non-human persons (e.g. their value to other people).<br /><br />Cases of insects planning for the future might be explained by evolutionary programming. The property I'm looking for is the ability to look to the past and future and feel depressed about a set of circumstances. Insects don't introspect, "Man, I got such a raw deal. Every day I have to go out and search for my food and some bird might eat me alive. This is hopeless!" This ability makes the effects of physical pain exponentially worse because it can be hung onto in memory. Without this quality, physical pain happens but then passes, and is only an issue for a short period of time. An insect can lose its leg and continue onward without changing its behaviour. If you forced me to choose a 10 minute period of my life in which to get tortured, I would choose my final 10 minutes because the pain would then only have a 10 minute window in which it actually mattered, before passing out of existence.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-45414553302475333392013-11-08T22:31:39.425-08:002013-11-08T22:31:39.425-08:00Hi Michael :)
Singer believes animals can feel mo...Hi Michael :)<br /><br />Singer believes animals can feel morally relevant pain without conceiving of themselves on a timeline. I believe his position is, rather, that having a sense of oneself over time implies a further property of "personhood," which makes it wrong to kill the being. It's wrong for both persons and non-persons to feel pain.<br /><br />Depending on how you delineate the boundaries of "conceiving oneself as existing over time," it's not completely obvious that insects don't have this property, because they implicitly plan for the future, but I can see the distinction you're trying to draw.<br /><br />Are you comfortable ruling out infants and severely intellectually disabled adult humans from direct moral concern if they can't perceive themselves over time? Of course, the parents and relatives still matter, but not the person him- or herself.<br /><br />"Pain itself does not concern me as much as does prolonged psychological anguish and depression."<br />Not as much, but how about at all? I wonder if you're underestimating how bad physical pain can be because we humans who live in industrialized countries mainly only have to deal with mental pain?<br /><br />"In deontological views of ethics, suffering is not inherently bad and is of less importance than is fulfilling specific duties to moral laws."<br />It depends what the laws are, no? The universal law "reduce as much expected suffering as you can" seems like a good candidate for a categorical imperative.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.com