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.
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.