So, do we need more humane fly spray?

What I found in the news

Do bees have feelings? Fears? 

According to Peter Singer in "Insects may have feelings, so do we need more humane fly spray?" mounting scientific evidence suggests that bees, if not all insects, might have brain structures sufficiently similar to those of mammals to create some basic emotional states such as fear (2016). Singer argues that if insects do have some degree of consciousness, they will also be capable of suffering, with consequences for how we may ethically treat them if we care about  following good morals.

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My response
After the serious and long (excessively long?) post about English grammars and points of grammar this morning, I was looking for something a bit more fun. First, the attractive green of the bumble bee photo caught my eye, then the title "Insects may have feelings, so do we need more humane fly spray?" interested me. Finally, when I saw that the author was Peter Singer, I knew it would be worth reading.

Singer, a fellow Australian, has long been one of my favourite living philosophers, and he well deserves the fame he enjoys. But the death threats he has regularly received since taking up his position as Princeton University in the US reminds us that 2,400 years after the Athenian democracy put Socrates to death under their rotten rule of law to protect young people from corruption philosophy can still be a dangerous business.

When Singer wrote about the experiment which apparently suggested feelings of fear on the part of the bees, I was also reminded of the topic we have started on in Skillful. Last term we read a short piece of philosophy, "Carving the Roast Beast," where the author, Stephen Law, makes a strong case that it is morally wrong to eat meat, something most students at least initially disagree with. In the course of his argument, Law cites Peter Singer, although in fact Singer does agree entirely with Law that it's morally wrong to eat animals just because we have to kill them to do so. Singer argues that suffering is the decisive moral consideration, so provided animals are killed painlessly after being kept in humane conditions in life, it is not necessarily wrong to eat them. Of course, the same arguments mean that abortion is also morally OK, even after birth, since the human foetus of new born baby, although capable of feeling pain, does not have a sufficiently well-developed brain to be a person with self-awareness.

Should we fear philosophers? Or should we perhaps fear more the bad thinking inherited from our ancestors?

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Reference

Singer, P. (2016, September 29). Insects may have feelings, so do we need more humane fly spray? New Scientist. Retrieved from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2107536-insects-may-have-feelings-so-do-we-need-more-humane-fly-spray/