Honey not vegan friendly?

[Me Myself]

Insects are pretty much nature's robots; automatons with no emotion or awareness. They don't have a capacity for suffering that higher animals like mammals do, so placing them on the same level does seem rather silly.

Plus, honey is delicious.

I agree with 90% of that. The bolded part is the highlight of where I do agree: The lack the ability to suffer great psychological pain. Technically they can feel pain, I don´t know If I would call it "suffering" (but I am sure it hurts)

The 10% I disagree is that I am sure they have awareness, albeit a very little one. As someone else said up there, they die in the wwild anyways and I would think at a higher rate.

You don't have to be able to have complex thinking processes in order to have consciousness.

100% agree.

 

[Bob Dixon]

Just because something can respond to a stimulus, doesn't mean it's "aware".

Insects are a bunch of little robots, it's true.

They should still be respected, though.

Also, honey is a plant product. It's only processed by the bees.

You don't have to be able to have complex thinking processes in order to have consciousness.

Yes, you do. Conciousness/self-awareness is exceedingly complex.

 

[jarofthoughts]

You don't have to be able to have complex thinking processes in order to have consciousness.

So far, all the data indicates that you are wrong.

 

[Madhuri]

Yes, you do. Conciousness/self-awareness is exceedingly complex.

I didn't say it isn't complex. I'm saying you don't have to be able to think logically or be very intelligent in order to have some level of awareness/experience.

 

[Madhuri]

So far, all the data indicates that you are wrong.

Please point me to the proofs that all insects lack consciousness.

 

[McBell]

I was browsing around for potato recipes and randomly happened upon a site that listed vegan friendly beers, and some were classified as not being vegan friendly for containing honey. Seriously? How is harvesting honey harmful to the bees? Is it because they're in captivity? They're insects, so it isn't like they're even aware of it. I can respect veganism, but extending it to insects just seems totally unnecessary and excessive. I assume vegans bathe and wash their hands, right? Doing so kills bacteria and other microbes, so where is the line drawn?

My experience from talking to a fw vegans is that each of them draw the line in different places.

you want to see a real knock down drag out fight, watch two vegans arguing over where that line should be drawn.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Please point me to the proofs that all insects lack consciousness.

Sure, but first I would like to hear your definition of consciousness.

 

[Koldo]

Sure, but first I would like to hear your definition of consciousness.

Weird. A few posts ago you seemed to have a firm understanding over what she means by 'consciousness'. :sarcastic

 

[Madhuri]

Sure, but first I would like to hear your definition of consciousness.

I'm referring to simple awareness. That there is a self that can perceive something, even if it is only sight or smell or touch etc. Any small thing that is experienced by an individual. So an insect might have only very low level of consciousness, but it may be a living thing that actually experiences pain or stimulation through some sense perception.

 

[jarofthoughts]

I'm referring to simple awareness. That there is a self that can perceive something, even if it is only sight or smell or touch etc. Any small thing that is experienced by an individual. So an insect might have only very low level of consciousness, but it may be a living thing that actually experiences pain or stimulation through some sense perception.

So, in short, any living thing that responds to stimuli has a consciousness? :sarcastic
Am I reading you right here?
Because by that definition, bacteria have consciousness...

 

[Madhuri]

So, in short, any living thing that responds to stimuli has a consciousness? :sarcastic
Am I reading you right here?
Because by that definition, bacteria have consciousness...

The key word was experience. A thing might react to stimuli without there being any conscious experience.
Does this make sense? As a conscious creature, is it not obvious what being conscious is?

Consciousness does not equal thoughts. It does not equal intelligence. It only implies some level of awareness or experience.

 

[Vinayaka]

from 'The Gods Must be Crazy ... "if you don't bother them, they won't bother you" I'm convinced wasps are like that. If you kill one of their kind, the rest seem to have a vendetta that lasts all summer ... Don't honey bees communicate by distinctive flying patterns that tell the group where the flowers are?

 

[jarofthoughts]

The key word was experience. A thing might react to stimuli without there being any conscious experience.
Does this make sense? As a conscious creature, is it not obvious what being conscious is?

Consciousness does not equal thoughts. It does not equal intelligence. It only implies some level of awareness or experience.

Actually, defining consciousness is pretty damn hard. :yes:
Most dictionaries are terribly vague, or uses words that themselves have vague definitions.
So the reason I'm pestering you with this is not because I have some infinitely clever definition up my sleeve that I will use to beat you over the head with later, but because people have their own idea of what consciousness is and isn't, including me, and if we're going to discuss who has or does not have it, the first thing we need to do is agree what this "it" actually is.

Would "the ability to respond and learn from it's environment" be a reasonable definition according to you?
Because if so, then we still have to include bacteria into the club of conscious organisms.

 

[Penumbra]

Generally speaking, in an ethics discussion concerning whether a certain animal feels pain, I consider the burden of proof to rest somewhat more on the side that suggests that they do not. This is because we know there is a cutoff point somewhere, based on physical biology, but determining exactly where that cutoff point is can be problematic and uncertain. If we know that we can feel pain, and we're pretty sure other humans feel pain, and we're pretty sure smart mammals feel pain, and we're pretty sure less intelligent mammals feel pain, and that so do birds, and to a certain extent reptiles, etc., then pain is a somewhat common thing.

If we're going to do something that could potentially cause a creature to suffer, based on the argument that they cannot suffer, then ethically, we better be fairly certain. But on the other hand, if we simply say "well, I'm not sure, so I'll avoid causing the suffering if possible", it doesn't require all that rigorous of a defense. So this is why I think the burden of proof rests more on one side than the other. Unfortunately, based on the scale in which we live, the avoidance of killing things is impossible.

To a certain extent, the question of what sort of qualia anything experiences is non-falsifiable. For instance, if someone asks me to prove that a bacterium or a plant doesn't feel pain, I can't provide absolute proof, but I can provide evidence such as they lack a brain (and so any pain system would have to be very different from ours, and we should have substantial evidence of it if it exists), that pain is not evolutionary advantageous to them, etc.

Insects seem to be more in the gray area. That is, they kind of have a brain, but it's more like several tiny interconnected brains. They move around and clearly interact with their environment, but much of what they do is programmed. What sometimes appears to be intelligent behavior, is usually studied to be instinctual behavior. I've read that if pick an insect up by its leg, it starts going crazy, but if you rip that leg off and put it down, it doesn't seem to be responding to a pain stimuli. Emotion is not a particularly useful thing for most invertebrates to have.
A source.

My position on the matter is that based on the evidence, I don't think that most insects can truly suffer. But, I try to err on the side of caution whenever possible, and so if I find an insect in my apartment, I try to capture it and let it out, or if I end up hurting it, I try to kill it quickly, etc. But we use so many pesticides to keep crops safe, and insects are dying all around us in incredible numbers naturally, so I don't lose sleep over an injured or killed insect as I would over, say, a cow getting its throat cut or something.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Evidence and observation.

Such as?

 

[Madhuri]

Would "the ability to respond and learn from it's environment" be a reasonable definition according to you?
Because if so, then we still have to include bacteria into the club of conscious organisms.

Depends. Can a thing 'learn' and 'respond' without having any awareness? A robot can do those things without having consciousness, correct?

I'm not good at defining things. I see Consciousness as the presence of perception or a perceiver. Our body might automatically react or change when stimulated without the individual controlling those physical responses. But that individual has perception of what is occurring. That perception might not include understanding or knowledge but it is witnessing something, experiencing something.

So an insect might have little intelligence, little ability to understand or have nearly no knowledge, may live mostly through instinct, but it may be conscious, meaning that it is a perceiver so it may feel hunger or feel pain or experience suffering etc.

Is this making any sense? I'm stuck by the limitations of language.

 

[Madhuri]

Good post Penumbra, I agree entirely.

 

[Storm]

Agree with Pen and Madhuri. The word "consciousness" does not necessitate higher functions. It's not "sapience," no matter how frequently they're conflated.

Insects are sentient, therefore conscious. They are not sapient, however.

 

[ScottySatan]

Honey isn't considered vegan by a lot of vegans. The reason why is that it's an animal product.

Perhaps easier to understand is that vegans don't eat shellfish like clams.

Veganism for many is a lifestyle of policy. That is, a decision to have a policy is made one time to apply to many things until further notice. That policy is to use no animal products.

Honey is an animal product. So under that paradigm, it's very simple.

Arbitrary cutoffs that define whether something is yes or no, are made in any policy decision, whether it's thinking about morality, law, piety, or even pure science.

Any policy decision like this can be made to look silly, but in a world without policy, it can be exhausting to evaluate every criterion on every decision you ever make.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Depends. Can a thing 'learn' and 'respond' without having any awareness? A robot can do those things without having consciousness, correct?

That is correct.

I'm not good at defining things. I see Consciousness as the presence of perception or a perceiver. Our body might automatically react or change when stimulated without the individual controlling those physical responses.

Indeed it does.
Actively controlling all the little reactions to go into homoeostasis would be a pain in the butt.

But that individual has perception of what is occurring. That perception might not include understanding or knowledge but it is witnessing something, experiencing something.

Don't take this the wrong way, but how is this different from the robot mentioned above?

So an insect might have little intelligence, little ability to understand or have nearly no knowledge, may live mostly through instinct, but it may be conscious, meaning that it is a perceiver so it may feel hunger or feel pain or experience suffering etc.

Is this making any sense? I'm stuck by the limitations of language.

Hmmm... Seeing as feelings, as far as we know, are nothing more than electrochemical reactions in our nervous system, and seeing as those feelings mentioned above have evolved to induce a response to the organism's environment, either to obtain nutrients or avoid/remove whatever is damaging the organism, one could say that that definition would also include, say, bacteria, and we could most certainly program a robot to have those reactions.
Like I said, defining consciousness is damn hard...

How about this one:
Consciousness means having a sense of self as something separate from the world around you on a high enough level that you are able to see the 'you' as an independent entity.
That would exclude micro-organisms, insects and most of the "lower" vertebrates, but would include those species who, for instance, can pass the Gallup Mirror Test.