Thanks for writing this. While doing research on invertebrate sentience I’ve wondered about this kind of thing. I don’t deliberately harm arthropods, but I haven’t stopped hiking (where I’ll probably step on many arthropods), and I definitely haven’t stopped washing. It’s true that you could give a means ends justification that help more animals by continuing to work I’m doing without disrupting my lifestyle by worrying about these things, but I’d be horrified if my normal life involved harming even a fraction as many large animals—I just don’t feel the same way about arthropods I guess.
It would be convenient if mites happen to have minuscule moral weight to justify our everyday behaviour, but I don’t think the arguments are good enough to be confident enough in that. People just seem to feel very definitely about these cases, whether or not there exist any good moral justification for it.
Thanks for writing this. While doing research on invertebrate sentience I’ve wondered about this kind of thing. I don’t deliberately harm arthropods, but I haven’t stopped hiking (where I’ll probably step on many arthropods), and I definitely haven’t stopped washing. It’s true that you could give a means ends justification that help more animals by continuing to work I’m doing without disrupting my lifestyle by worrying about these things, but I’d be horrified if my normal life involved harming even a fraction as many large animals—I just don’t feel the same way about arthropods I guess.
It would be convenient if mites happen to have minuscule moral weight to justify our everyday behaviour, but I don’t think the arguments are good enough to be confident enough in that. People just seem to feel very definitely about these cases, whether or not there exist any good moral justification for it.