Possible Positions On Insect Suffering

The vast quantity of insects in the world means that subtle changes in our views on the moral standing of insects might drastically change our priorities. Below is a number of possible positions on the moral importance of insect suffering. 

1. Insects cannot feel pain.

a) Insects cannot feel pain so what happens to them is not morally relevant.

b) Insects cannot feel pain but nature is inherently worth preserving so we should care about them anyway.

2. Insects can feel pain but they cannot suffer like humans can suffer.

a) Insects can feel pain but moral relevance is determined by properties other than ability to experience pain and happiness.

b) 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.

c) Insects cannot suffer like humans can but they can feel pain and because they vastly outnumber humans, their billion billion little pains “stack up” to some morally relevant amount, even if that amount does not match or surpass the pains of 7 billion humans.

d) Insects cannot suffer like humans can but they can feel pain and because they vastly outnumber humans, their billion billion little pains “stack up” to match or surpass our 7 billion larger pains.

3. Insects can suffer like humans can.

a) Insects can suffer like humans can but moral relevance is determined by properties other than ability to experience suffering and wellbeing.

b) Insects can suffer like humans can but their suffering still doesn’t fall within the human sphere of equal consideration due to the lack of some property P.

c) Insects can suffer like humans can and insects vastly outnumber humans, thus thinking about ways to reduce insect suffering en masse might surpass the importance of thinking about ways to reduce human suffering en masse.

There are three main questions whose answers divide the above positions.

1. How and to what extent do insects suffer?
2. Is the existence of suffering morally relevant?
3. Can many small pains stack up to rival a few large pains?

1. How and to what extent can insects suffer?

This is a factual question. There is as of yet little to no hard evidence that insects can suffer in the complicated and intense ways humans suffer. There is reason to conclude that insects are capable of experiencing pain. Pain itself does not concern me as much as does prolonged psychological anguish and depression. Insects don’t seem to be able to experience this, even in response to physically painful experiences. I would locate my position as 2b, with the possibility of leaning towards 2c or 2d. I follow in the lines of Peter Singer as thinking that insects and other invertebrates may feel morally relevant pain, but that they have less of a right to life than humans due to an inability to envision themselves as existing on a timeline.

2. Is suffering a criterion of moral relevance?

Whether suffering is a criterion of moral relevance depends on whether one endorses hedonic utilitarianism or preference utilitarianism (I am conveniently ignoring all the alternatives that aren't at all appealing to me). The amount of suffering an act leads to is arguably the ultimate indicator of its moral goodness, but what if people desire something that leads to them having less happiness? Should we give them what they want or force them to reduce their suffering as much as possible? In most cases, these two ways of seeing things will overlap, as people prefer to be happy than to suffer, but sometimes there will be differences. Personally, I favour preference utilitarianism, but I don't think it makes much difference in the case of insect suffering, as the insects capable of feeling pain likely have an implicit preference for not feeling pain.

Most deontologists would answer no to the above question, however, and would have a legitimate basis for ignoring the mass suffering of insects in the wild even if she answered affirmatively to questions 1 and 3. In deontological views of ethics, suffering is not inherently bad and is of less importance than is fulfilling specific duties to moral laws.

3. Can many small pains stack up to rival a few large pains?

The simplest answer is “Yes.” If we have a basic unit of wellbeing/suffering that scales proportionately then all the ethicist has to do is keep score. A metric that weighs some amounts of suffering and wellbeing more heavily than it does other instances of the same amount doesn’t obviously register as coherent to me. I naturally assume that if the Holocaust was –1 billion utility and a broken dog leg is -10 utility, then it would take a finite number of broken dog legs to match and then surpass the negative utility of the Holocaust.

To deny this, we might assert the existence of a threshold. A threshold is a barrier that separates brackets of utility from eligibility for comparison with one another. So if we set a threshold at -1, then values smaller than -1 cannot stack up to surpass values larger than -1.

One might set multiple thresholds. Suppose one sets a first threshold at -1 and a second one at -10. That would mean that a single pain worth -1 would be more horrible than would be three separate pains of -0.5, and that six separate pains of -9 are outweighed by a single pain worth -11.

This is intuitively very wrong. One might then set dynamic thresholds. These dynamic thresholds would establish a radius on either side of the barrier. Only values within that radius can be compared with one another. So if we choose a dynamic threshold of 100, that would mean that values more than 100 units apart should not be combatting each other in the same moral debates. In this scenario, six pains of -50 can stack up to surpass a single pain of 149, but they cannot stack up to surpass a single pain of -151. Meanwhile, three pains of -51 would outweigh a single pain of -151. There is an intuitive problem with this because six pains of -50 obviously outweigh three pains of -51 when placed head-to-head. We have an instance of A > B > C > A, a logical failing.

We might want to set our thresholds many orders of magnitude apart so that the likelihood of pains falling just above or just below the threshold would be extremely unlikely. In this way thresholds might work as a useful heuristic for comparing large and small moral values. I don't see a coherent or useful way to formulate this, however.

The theoretical addition of thresholds does not tie us to a particular position on the moral standing of insect suffering. It could be the case then that insect suffering falls beneath a low threshold and thus cannot compete with human and animal suffering, amounting to positions 2b or 3b. It might also be the case that insect suffering falls above the low threshold while human suffering falls below a higher threshold, opening the door for insect pains to stack up and surpass human suffering. This amounts to either position 2d or 3c.

I personally find that thresholds are too arbitrary and too difficult to justify. Who gets to decide them? What would they base their decisions on? What do thresholds accomplish? The only justification I see for grossly complicating our way of quantifying morally relevant experience is that thresholds arguably bring us closer to some of our intuitions but, perhaps, at the cost of distancing ourselves from other ones.