Theodicy, Animal Suffering, and Naive Anthropopathism

[rauserbegins]

David Foster Wallace wrote a famous essay called "Consider the Lobster" which considers the question of whether lobsters can experience pain and fear when being boiled alive, and whether or not it is reasonable to think we can even speculate about it. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the question of non-mammal consciousness.

[mistressofstones]

Well that was a very different perspective on Darwin. I think not only did he think the process was grotesque, which everyone probably can feel, but he identified with the caterpillar and kind of felt the injustice of the situation. Very interesting :)

[The-DO]

Mr. Randal
Do you think it's easier to start from zero or to restore? (whether it's programming, design, architecture, or --theology--)

[kamilgregor]

When we stop projecting the human condition onto animals, the problem of animal suffering becomes WORSE, not less bad, and that's because we realize that in fact, animals suffer and additionaly, unlike humans, are depraved of the emotional comfort of theodicies.

[leslieviljoen]

I read that certain ants seem to be able to pass the Mirror Self-Recognition Test. I sincerely hope it's not true.

Otherwise, I think worrying about insect suffering is a bit of a red herring right now, since we have so many highly sentient animals who suffer tremendously at our hands for the sake of taste pleasure - when many of us have tasty alternatives easily available. We easily relate to the suffering of a dog, but try hard to be ignorant of the suffering of pigs.

[Kenji]

You are so smart how can i be like you?

[charlestownsend]

A catapilar has the ability to feel hunger, pain, to sense its surroundings, to remember things, to rectify to its surroundings, to struggle when caught by prey or run away when it knows it's in danger, etc, to suggest that it doesn't have conciseness is ridiculous, if is shows all the signs of being aware of the world around it and to think then it clearly has conciseness.
The only alternative is to say that everything it does is preprogrammed and I can make the exact same argument for humans, I can even make an argument against free will, there is evidence to suggest that we have no control over everything we do. Where for you draw the line of what has and hasn't got conciseness? So far your line seems to be arbitrary based on appearance and how close to looking like us they are.

[TemujinJAG]

Insects don't need consciousness or self-awareness to feel pain. This doesn't address the problem of suffering at all.