Insect welfare (unlike woke identitarian proliferation) is not a priori wrong. Consciouness is noumenal and consenquently you cannot rule it out from insects. But it looks obvious that conscienciousness is related to nervous system complexity, which depends on brain size.
And complexity grows far more than linearly with “interactions” among parts of a system. I would say that my iphone is as likely to be consciouss as a fly. A fruit fly has 150,000 neurons, a human 16,340,000,000.
“Secondly, the argument for arthropod welfare is essentially exactly the same as your classic antispeciesist arguments”
That are right, but exagerated. I mean:
Fruit fly: 150,000
Dog: 885,460,000
Human: 16,340,000,000
Torturing animals that have a neuron count around 2-3% of yours is something to be concerned about. But the ratio Human-fruit fly is 0.0009%. And mathematical theories of consciousness suggest strong supperaditivity of conscience, so the ratios probably understate the moral weight difference.
Insect welfare (unlike woke identitarian proliferation) is not a priori wrong. Consciouness is noumenal and consenquently you cannot rule it out from insects. But it looks obvious that conscienciousness is related to nervous system complexity, which depends on brain size.
And complexity grows far more than linearly with “interactions” among parts of a system. I would say that my iphone is as likely to be consciouss as a fly. A fruit fly has 150,000 neurons, a human 16,340,000,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons
“Secondly, the argument for arthropod welfare is essentially exactly the same as your classic antispeciesist arguments”
That are right, but exagerated. I mean:
Fruit fly: 150,000
Dog: 885,460,000
Human: 16,340,000,000
Torturing animals that have a neuron count around 2-3% of yours is something to be concerned about. But the ratio Human-fruit fly is 0.0009%. And mathematical theories of consciousness suggest strong supperaditivity of conscience, so the ratios probably understate the moral weight difference.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FjiND3qJCvC6CtmxG/super-additivity-of-consciousness