No, they do not. Little boys have way more nerves and more neurons, but they do not feel any pain!
Do Insects Feel Pain?
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#32Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#33Supposing that it was conclusively proven that they did not. Would it still be ethical to kill them? The Jain religion has quite a bit to say on this topic: https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/11/22/atten... Side note: the author also notes a very unusual consideration of electricity as consisting of a living force, that should therefore not be used needlessly.
It would be still ethical if it was conclusively proven they did.
There's no shortage of ethical theories ranging from Jainism to Nietzsche and they basically follow the laws of natural selection.
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#34Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#35Peter Singer, mentioned in the article has a great (and influential) book published in 1979 called Practical Ethics, if you’re interested in this topic you should definitely check that out.
If you’ve never listened to the Philosophy Bites podcast, here’s a relevant episode on the status of animals:https://philosophybites.libsyn.com/christine-korsgaard-on-th...
Also here’s a thought: unnecessary harming of an entity is bad for its effect on you, ie one should refrain from killing an insect even if it did not feel pain. Same holds for a nice rock formation.
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#36Honest question. If you remove religious and spiritual aspects and come at it from a place of pure reason, does it really matter?
What is pain but a chemical signal something is wrong?
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#37I never intentionally harm a single insect... except flies and mosquitos. I hope they do feel the pain as they deserve it! Other than that I respect all of them.
I used to never harm insects until I found ticks and mosquitos on my dog...So now I kill ticks and mosquitos. I like spiders though. I have had one living in my bathroom window for about six months now. It seems to be eating other spiders that try to crawl in based on the contents of its web. I consider this rent payment and allow it to stay.
The other "spiders" may be its molts. In any case, if it's growing, it's eating other bugs...
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pain only makes sense if an animal can learn. It is a teaching mechanism to modify future behavior. A very simple creature may act purely automatically, not even instinct but raw dna-programmed responses. Pain makes little sense there as there is no learning to be done. I doubt bacteria feel pain.
Wouldn't modifying current behavior be sufficient to justify the existence of pain? The mechanism can be a useful adaptation even if a single organism cannot learn. Maybe the default state of bacteria is pain and they can only relieve it temporarily. The ones that survive to multiply are the ones best adapted to relieving pain.
The entire purpose of experiencing externally induced pain is to cause a reaction before the threshold of permanent damage is reached. Given our imprecise biological systems, that threshold needs to be crossed with a safe margin of error. It stands to reason that reactions to avoid threats to the the continuation of life are valid, regardless of the presence of nociceptors.
Internal pain (headaches, etc.) may require some manner of cognition to associate behaviors with the result, assuming they have a cause other than flawed biology.
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#39Honest question. If you remove religious and spiritual aspects and come at it from a place of pure reason, does it really matter? What is pain but a chemical signal something is wrong?
I don’t think wanting to avoid inflicting pain on others is religious/spiritual
Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mosquitos are only one type of countless types of insects, most of which are harmless or even beneficial to humans. In any case if you are going to have such a war-like attitude, it's the humans that deserve to be destroyed by the animals, not the other way around. We are the ones fucking up the planet. And we kill almost 100 billion animals a year for food, and who knows how many others from other human activities.
Humans are animals, very successful ones. The only reason other animals are kept in check, is because they eat their food source until there's too little left to sustain them. Goats will eat everything bare, locusts destroy everything, beetles ruin forests, beavers dam rivers changing ecosystems so much, it can be seen from space. Every single lifeform on this planet expands, grows, multiplies without restraint. Anim…
No, you misunderstand me. I do not act as if other animals are noble, I act as if humans are not special in comparison to other animals.