[ytturbed]

Yeah. Another questionable assumption:

>If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells painfully crunching?

No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals but whether bugs experience suffering seems like an open question to me.

[girvo]

I rationally know that, but I can't bring myself to wilfully destroy life, even that of an insect, with the sole exception of if something is dangerous. So I can totally understand the reactions of those who don't have a high "everyday sadism" score.

[ytturbed]

Oh I agree, I'm the same, but I do acknowledge that there's an unsolved philosophical/scientific problem here, with no good explanations in sight.

And thus I can't equate indifference to the death of insects with sadism.

[tjradcliffe]

Whether its sadism or not is independent of the experience of the bug, even if that question is meaningful. It depends on whether the person committing the act believes the bug is suffering, and whether they enjoy it on that basis or some other.

And since the question is open as to what the bug's experience is, there may also be a tendency for individuals to interpret their behaviours as being evidence of suffering or not depending on how sadistic they are. Non-sadists may tend to interpret the bug's behaviour in ways that suggest there isn't any experience of suffering. Sadists will do the opposite.

It's difficult to see what if any interesting issues the question of the bug's internal experience could bear on. It's our perception or imagination of that experience that would seem to be far more important in how the act should be classified for a given individual.

[dmm]

> No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals

Why are you so certain? There seems to be plenty of debate on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates .

[ytturbed]

'No doubt' is a figure of speech. But in species where there aren't any pain signals at all, my case is strengthened. I've skimmed the page you link: doesn't it just assume that 'pain experience' implies suffering? But this is contradicted by the testimony of cancer patients on opiates or Hindu saints undergoing surgery without anaesthesia. They feel the pain but it doesn't bother them.

[eli_gottlieb]

Ummm... irrespective of whether they experience suffering in any phenomenological sense, what's the actual point supposed to be in feeding bugs through a coffee grinder? It seems as if you could only really enjoy the act if you enjoyed the prospect of making something else suffer.