Yes, I think this is one of the strongest (if not the strongest) arguments against my position, even though it's been framed and articulated in various ways over time. It has been widely discussed, and I suspect my response may be unsatisfying to you.
To be honest, my stance on this point is largely intuition-motivated. I could find many things that I think set humans apart from animals, none of which have gone unchallenegd in the discourse, however. I acknowledge that this makes it feel incomplete or unsatisfactory, but it's probabaly best not to launch a full on animal-rights debate here.
It would seem, then, that we've reached a sort of stalemate. Or, you've challenged my position. I'm happy to concede either way, but with that said, I won't be dropping it as a result.
Regardless, thanks for the interesting conversation. Have a good one.
I’m confused by your response, as it introduces a line of reasoning that undermines your own argument.
Your central thesis appears to be the following:
Insect suffering either morally matters the most or doesn't matter at all; treating it as moderately important is incoherent.
To support this, your argument seems to rest on a series of premises:
Insects vastly outnumber humans, making them the dominant class of potentially sentient beings on Earth.
Despite their size, insects may experience significant suffering, especially given the brief and often brutal nature of their lives.
Even if an individual insect suffers far less than a human, the sheer scale of their population means their aggregate suffering may vastly outweigh human suffering.
Therefore, if insect suffering matters, it matters the most. If it doesn't matter, then it can be dismissed entirely but there is no coherent middle ground.
For this argument to succeed, however, it relies on an assumption: Either,
(i) Suffering and pleasure are the only things that matter,
or
(ii) Suffering and pleasure are the most fundamental things that matter, such that all other things that matter are derivable from them.
These assumptions are critical because they entail that we have a moral obligation to reduce suffering and increase pleasure in all moral contexts (assuming we have a moral obligation to uphold what morally matters - but we assume that anyway otherewise why are we even here).
If we accept either of these assumptions, then the transition from [3] to [4] is valid. That is, if suffering and pleasure are morally overriding or foundational, then yes, given the scale of insect suffering, its mitigation must be treated as the thing that matters most.
However, if we assume the new position that you have just now introuduced (that suffering and pleasure are among the things that matter, but not necessarily the most important), your argument fails. This is because:
Once we concede that suffering and pleasure occupy only a subset of the things that matter, then the move from [3] to [4] is no longer entailed.
This assumption allows for this claim to be true:
"There may be (and plausibly are) other values that override the imperative to reduce insect suffering in moral situations."
If we allow that there exist things that matter more than pleasure or suffering, then there will be scenarios in which these things rightfully take precedence. Therefore, even if the total amount of insect suffering is immense, we are not necessarily obligated to prioritise it, if we are not prioritising suffering in the first place.
And once we step into a more pluralistic moral framework, where many things matter, the relative weight of insect suffering continues to decline. The more "things that matter" we admit into our moral calculus, the more frequently insect suffering will be deprioritised in favor of other concerns.
In light of this, your argument depends on a specific and controversial metaethical assumption:
That suffering and pleasure are either the supreme or foundational things that matter.
But by introducing the new assumption, as your own comment does, you implicitly concede that suffering and pleasure may not be paramount, thereby collapsing the very basis of your original claim.
Your argument fails no matter which path you take.
If you assume that suffering and pleasure are the only or most fundamental things that matter, your argument collapses into reductio ad absurdum.
If you instead assume that suffering and pleasure are only some among many things that matter, then there exists a potentially infinite set of more pressing moral priorities, and insect suffering is demoted accordingly.
Either way, the central claim that "insect suffering must be either of the most or no importance" fails.
Thanks for your response and for the recommendation - an interesting read.
I should clarify that when I use the term "moral intuition," I am referring to something more substantial than a gut feeling. The phrase "gut feeling" strikes me as somewhat deflationary in capturing the vividness and perceived reality of moral intuitions. That said, I should also note that I am not, strictly speaking, a moral intuitionist.
It is important to observe, however, that even if we grant that insects possess consciousness and are capable of suffering, concluding that they therefore deserve moral consideration would still require an additional premise: namely, something like "morality is fundamentally concerned with the mitigation of suffering", or perhaps more broadly, "with the flourishing of conscious beings" etc.
Here's my issue:
I approach ethics from a virtue-theoretic perspective. I don't believe that morality is primarily about minimising suffering or achieving some general good across conscious entities. Rather, I understand morality as fundamentally oriented toward human flourishing (flourishing in a specifically human sense).
Therefore, even if I were to accept that insects are conscious, I remain unconvinced that their welfare should be a cause priority, let alone that it constitutes a genuine domain of moral concern.
But, even if we throw virtue ethics out of the window, and suppose that morality is not only about human flourishing, the position that tries to draw the priority of insect suffering from the fact that they are conscious would still have a lot of work to do: Why does consciousness equate to moral consideration? Why does consciousness mean suffering is possible? Suppose consciousness does mean suffering is possible, is this enough suffering or the same kind of suffering to equate moral concern? And so on and so on.....
Hi, thanks for your reply. This is a difficult question. I should say as a disclaimer that I'm not coming from a rights-based ethical framework. I haven’t engaged deeply with rights-based theories, but from the limited exposure I’ve had, I’m not convinced they provide a particularly effective foundation for articulating or justifying moral judgments. They seem, to me, more like rhetorical containers rather than real moral artefacts, if that makes sense.
That said, my views on moral patienthood, while evolving, tend toward a kind of human-first perspective. I'd generally argue that human beings possess a kind of intrinsic moral worth, and that humanity, as a collective endeavour or end, ought to take precedence over other ends.
I do acknowledge that non-human animals are capable of being harmed or benefitted, and that we have some moral obligations not to inflict unnecessary harm onto them. However, when forced to choose between a human and a non-human animal, I anticipate I would almost always choose the human.
This perspective can be directly applied to the domain of cause prioritisation. If one holds that, as a general principle, human interests should take precedence over those of non-human animals, then it follows that causes which primarily benefit human beings will be prioritised over those that focus on non-human animals.
Of course, when comparing causes that fall entirely within the domain of non-human animal ethics, a different evaluative metric would need to be employed. However, given my prior commitment to a human-first moral framework and the reality of limited personal resources, it seems unlikely that I would allocate substantial effort toward evaluating or supporting animal-focused causes. Given my commitments, I should maximise my impact by concentrating on human-centred initiatives and, correspondingly, opting out of debates over the relative merits of animal-related causes.
Let me know if you have any reservations about anything I've just said there. Thanks again for reaching out.
Hi, I really enjoyed this post. Your writing style is engaging, and the argument is well-constructed, provided one accepts certain assumptions about morality.
For me, this piece really functions as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the utilitarian calculus and the broader worldview that equates moral good with maximising pleasure or minimising suffering.
If we grant your premises, which seem largely true, though there are a few objections raised in the comments (not that I want to get into those here), then the argument is sound. However, the conclusion, that insect welfare is "the biggest issue", strikes me as ultimately absurd. It runs counter to nearly every moral intuition we have (and I’d argue that moral intuitions shouldn’t be casually dismissed. We rely on intuitive value judgments in virtually every domain of inquiry).
I appreciate your argument and admire your willingness to defend it. But to me, this is precisely the kind of extreme conclusion that reveals the limitations of utilitarianism when followed to its logical endpoint. It’s one of the reasons I ultimately stepped away from the view a few years ago.
I’m sharing the piece here, though I’ve since noticed a few critical assumptions I left unexamined. I’m currently working on a follow-up that addresses these oversights and explores their implications for the argument. Still, I believe it’s worth sharing this essay as it stands. Partly, it’s a way for me to track my own evolving engagement with this kind of thinking; partly, it’s an effort to be transparent about that evolution. Stay tuned for the rebuttal.
Yes, I think this is one of the strongest (if not the strongest) arguments against my position, even though it's been framed and articulated in various ways over time. It has been widely discussed, and I suspect my response may be unsatisfying to you.
To be honest, my stance on this point is largely intuition-motivated. I could find many things that I think set humans apart from animals, none of which have gone unchallenegd in the discourse, however. I acknowledge that this makes it feel incomplete or unsatisfactory, but it's probabaly best not to launch a full on animal-rights debate here.
It would seem, then, that we've reached a sort of stalemate. Or, you've challenged my position. I'm happy to concede either way, but with that said, I won't be dropping it as a result.
Regardless, thanks for the interesting conversation. Have a good one.
I’m confused by your response, as it introduces a line of reasoning that undermines your own argument.
Your central thesis appears to be the following:
Insect suffering either morally matters the most or doesn't matter at all; treating it as moderately important is incoherent.
To support this, your argument seems to rest on a series of premises:
For this argument to succeed, however, it relies on an assumption: Either,
(i) Suffering and pleasure are the only things that matter,
or
(ii) Suffering and pleasure are the most fundamental things that matter, such that all other things that matter are derivable from them.
These assumptions are critical because they entail that we have a moral obligation to reduce suffering and increase pleasure in all moral contexts (assuming we have a moral obligation to uphold what morally matters - but we assume that anyway otherewise why are we even here).
If we accept either of these assumptions, then the transition from [3] to [4] is valid. That is, if suffering and pleasure are morally overriding or foundational, then yes, given the scale of insect suffering, its mitigation must be treated as the thing that matters most.
However, if we assume the new position that you have just now introuduced (that suffering and pleasure are among the things that matter, but not necessarily the most important), your argument fails. This is because:
Once we concede that suffering and pleasure occupy only a subset of the things that matter, then the move from [3] to [4] is no longer entailed.
This assumption allows for this claim to be true:
"There may be (and plausibly are) other values that override the imperative to reduce insect suffering in moral situations."
If we allow that there exist things that matter more than pleasure or suffering, then there will be scenarios in which these things rightfully take precedence. Therefore, even if the total amount of insect suffering is immense, we are not necessarily obligated to prioritise it, if we are not prioritising suffering in the first place.
And once we step into a more pluralistic moral framework, where many things matter, the relative weight of insect suffering continues to decline. The more "things that matter" we admit into our moral calculus, the more frequently insect suffering will be deprioritised in favor of other concerns.
In light of this, your argument depends on a specific and controversial metaethical assumption:
That suffering and pleasure are either the supreme or foundational things that matter.
But by introducing the new assumption, as your own comment does, you implicitly concede that suffering and pleasure may not be paramount, thereby collapsing the very basis of your original claim.
Your argument fails no matter which path you take.
If you assume that suffering and pleasure are the only or most fundamental things that matter, your argument collapses into reductio ad absurdum.
If you instead assume that suffering and pleasure are only some among many things that matter, then there exists a potentially infinite set of more pressing moral priorities, and insect suffering is demoted accordingly.
Either way, the central claim that "insect suffering must be either of the most or no importance" fails.
Hi,
Thanks for your response and for the recommendation - an interesting read.
I should clarify that when I use the term "moral intuition," I am referring to something more substantial than a gut feeling. The phrase "gut feeling" strikes me as somewhat deflationary in capturing the vividness and perceived reality of moral intuitions. That said, I should also note that I am not, strictly speaking, a moral intuitionist.
It is important to observe, however, that even if we grant that insects possess consciousness and are capable of suffering, concluding that they therefore deserve moral consideration would still require an additional premise: namely, something like "morality is fundamentally concerned with the mitigation of suffering", or perhaps more broadly, "with the flourishing of conscious beings" etc.
Here's my issue:
I approach ethics from a virtue-theoretic perspective. I don't believe that morality is primarily about minimising suffering or achieving some general good across conscious entities. Rather, I understand morality as fundamentally oriented toward human flourishing (flourishing in a specifically human sense).
Therefore, even if I were to accept that insects are conscious, I remain unconvinced that their welfare should be a cause priority, let alone that it constitutes a genuine domain of moral concern.
But, even if we throw virtue ethics out of the window, and suppose that morality is not only about human flourishing, the position that tries to draw the priority of insect suffering from the fact that they are conscious would still have a lot of work to do: Why does consciousness equate to moral consideration? Why does consciousness mean suffering is possible? Suppose consciousness does mean suffering is possible, is this enough suffering or the same kind of suffering to equate moral concern? And so on and so on.....
Hi, thanks for your reply. This is a difficult question. I should say as a disclaimer that I'm not coming from a rights-based ethical framework. I haven’t engaged deeply with rights-based theories, but from the limited exposure I’ve had, I’m not convinced they provide a particularly effective foundation for articulating or justifying moral judgments. They seem, to me, more like rhetorical containers rather than real moral artefacts, if that makes sense.
That said, my views on moral patienthood, while evolving, tend toward a kind of human-first perspective. I'd generally argue that human beings possess a kind of intrinsic moral worth, and that humanity, as a collective endeavour or end, ought to take precedence over other ends.
I do acknowledge that non-human animals are capable of being harmed or benefitted, and that we have some moral obligations not to inflict unnecessary harm onto them. However, when forced to choose between a human and a non-human animal, I anticipate I would almost always choose the human.
This perspective can be directly applied to the domain of cause prioritisation. If one holds that, as a general principle, human interests should take precedence over those of non-human animals, then it follows that causes which primarily benefit human beings will be prioritised over those that focus on non-human animals.
Of course, when comparing causes that fall entirely within the domain of non-human animal ethics, a different evaluative metric would need to be employed. However, given my prior commitment to a human-first moral framework and the reality of limited personal resources, it seems unlikely that I would allocate substantial effort toward evaluating or supporting animal-focused causes. Given my commitments, I should maximise my impact by concentrating on human-centred initiatives and, correspondingly, opting out of debates over the relative merits of animal-related causes.
Let me know if you have any reservations about anything I've just said there. Thanks again for reaching out.
Hi, I would consider myself a Virtue Ethicist. I think this piece relies on a misunderstanding on what Virtue Ethics is about.
Hi, I really enjoyed this post. Your writing style is engaging, and the argument is well-constructed, provided one accepts certain assumptions about morality.
For me, this piece really functions as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the utilitarian calculus and the broader worldview that equates moral good with maximising pleasure or minimising suffering.
If we grant your premises, which seem largely true, though there are a few objections raised in the comments (not that I want to get into those here), then the argument is sound. However, the conclusion, that insect welfare is "the biggest issue", strikes me as ultimately absurd. It runs counter to nearly every moral intuition we have (and I’d argue that moral intuitions shouldn’t be casually dismissed. We rely on intuitive value judgments in virtually every domain of inquiry).
I appreciate your argument and admire your willingness to defend it. But to me, this is precisely the kind of extreme conclusion that reveals the limitations of utilitarianism when followed to its logical endpoint. It’s one of the reasons I ultimately stepped away from the view a few years ago.
I’m sharing the piece here, though I’ve since noticed a few critical assumptions I left unexamined. I’m currently working on a follow-up that addresses these oversights and explores their implications for the argument. Still, I believe it’s worth sharing this essay as it stands. Partly, it’s a way for me to track my own evolving engagement with this kind of thinking; partly, it’s an effort to be transparent about that evolution. Stay tuned for the rebuttal.