Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

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LuckyR
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by LuckyR »

J G Hunter wrote:1) Why do you derive pleasure from killing animals? 2) Is there a benefit to leaving these animals, ants, in place that surpasses the benefit you feel you gain of pleasure from their destruction? 3) Do you feel you have a right to kill animals and nobody has a right to stop you? 4) Would you beat your neighbour's pet to death? 5) Why not? If you feel pets are a person's property and therefore are a no go, why did those wild ants suddenly become your property? 6) If you feel it is your right to kill animals, have you made effort to overturn those silly animal cruelty laws? 7) Are animal cruelty laws the only reason that you don't attack people's pets but you are happy to derive pleasure from the death of wild animals who pose you no risk or harm?
1- Are you addressing anyone in particular? 2- See #1, this has been addressed 3- Too vague to answer 4- I'm going with "no" 5- It is not a "feel"ing, it's the law, pets are property, period. Are you familiar with the phrase: "possession is 9 tenths of the law"?, it applies here. 6- Flawed assumption 7- See #5
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J G Hunter
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by J G Hunter »

LuckyR wrote:
J G Hunter wrote:1) Why do you derive pleasure from killing animals? 2) Is there a benefit to leaving these animals, ants, in place that surpasses the benefit you feel you gain of pleasure from their destruction? 3) Do you feel you have a right to kill animals and nobody has a right to stop you? 4) Would you beat your neighbour's pet to death? 5) Why not? If you feel pets are a person's property and therefore are a no go, why did those wild ants suddenly become your property? 6) If you feel it is your right to kill animals, have you made effort to overturn those silly animal cruelty laws? 7) Are animal cruelty laws the only reason that you don't attack people's pets but you are happy to derive pleasure from the death of wild animals who pose you no risk or harm?
1- Are you addressing anyone in particular? 2- See #1, this has been addressed 3- Too vague to answer 4- I'm going with "no" 5- It is not a "feel"ing, it's the law, pets are property, period. Are you familiar with the phrase: "possession is 9 tenths of the law"?, it applies here. 6- Flawed assumption 7- See #5
It was aimed at the OP.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Harbal »

When I saw this post it made me think of Beavis and Butthead. They were obnoxious but I imagine they grew out of it by the time they were 23.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

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When I was a kid, I remember one day I was walking down the sidewalk with my friends. Suddenly I started kind of weaving on and off and all over the sidewalk. When they asked what I was doing, I said, "I'm dodging ants" because I was. To which, of course, they responded by jumping up and down on all the ants they could find. They laughed at me, expecting me to be upset, but I wasn't. A little upset that they thought it was stupid of me to intentionally dodge them, but not upset for the ants. I'll admit, however, that they looked pretty silly to me, jumping up and down on ants on purpose, laughing hysterically. I remember wondering why they thought it was so funny.

I just feel that if I have no good reason to kill something, I have no desire to do it. My morals are not very high - I've done lots of terrible things in my life, some of which I am still not sorry for, to be honest. But I just don't see the point in killing something unless you're defending yourself or plan to eat it, or for some other purpose. I'm not even a big fan of picking flowers. Oh look, how pretty - think I'll kill it. Taking life - whether it's a cute intelligent dolphin or an ugly ant devoid of personality - just doesn't make sense to me. I don't even feel emotional about it, which is why I wasn't upset when my friends killed all the ants I had spared. It just seems logical to me to avoid taking life, no matter what form of life it is. Because I'm alive too, I guess.

-- Updated March 3rd, 2015, 10:01 pm to add the following --

And I just want to add (jeez, my reply finally got posted!), that this guy who chastised you wasn't a champion for ants either. He was a miserable jerk who decided to take whatever his problem is out on you.
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LuckyR
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by LuckyR »

The OP was about bugs, but the later posts are about ants, specifically. From a genetic standpoint ants are not alive as individuals (any more than one of your brain cells is "alive", they are of course living, but they are not capable of living on their own and they are able to pass along their genetic material by themselves, they are part of a larger organism. Ants are part of an ant colony, which is in fact alive genetically, and your brain cell is, of course part of you). Thus stepping on individual worker ants which are out foraging for food is not killing, or arguably even harming the colony, not dissimilar to cutting a sliver of skin off of your finger when chopping vegetables.

Thus completely legal and moral, though perhaps not ethical.
"As usual... it depends."
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Sy Borg
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Sy Borg »

Fair point, Lucky, though we can't survive outside of the nest either and the intense lobbying against healthcare and OH&S laws suggests that dead workers don't matter either.

My suspicion is that the experience of living is the same for all entities - each living in a vivid now, whether that "now" largely consists of immediately forgotten simple chemical impulses or pondering the meaning of life.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
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LuckyR
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

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Greta wrote:Fair point, Lucky, though we can't survive outside of the nest either and the intense lobbying against healthcare and OH&S laws suggests that dead workers don't matter either.

My suspicion is that the experience of living is the same for all entities - each living in a vivid now, whether that "now" largely consists of immediately forgotten simple chemical impulses or pondering the meaning of life.

I would disagree. I would argue that under the common definitions thown about, that an ant colony is alive and is in fact the organism, not an ant. For example, an ant has almost no individual intellect, yet a colony can solve moderately complex problems through group intelligence. Hollywood tried to capture this idea with Star Trek NG's Borg. Thus why soldier ants willingly go to their "deaths" to save the colony, seems a conundrum, until you realize that the soldier ant didn't "die" because it was never independantly "alive" to begin with, any more than some cells lining the bursa of your knee "care" if they die when you run top speed away from a fire, for example.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Steve3007 »

These are Interesting points about the collective nature of species like ants and the relevance that this may have to questions about the morality of killing them. I think the main thing that they demonstrate is that questions about the morality of such things are un-answerable objectively because morality, it seems me, is entirely based on empathy and utility. i.e we make personal decisions about the morality of killing other creatures based on our empathy (or lack thereof) for them and their usefulness to us dead or alive.

But, LuckyR, I wonder why you said this:
Thus completely legal and moral, though perhaps not ethical.
Why moral but not ethical?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Sy Borg »

LuckyR wrote:I would disagree. I would argue that under the common definitions thown about, that an ant colony is alive and is in fact the organism, not an ant. For example, an ant has almost no individual intellect, yet a colony can solve moderately complex problems through group intelligence. Hollywood tried to capture this idea with Star Trek NG's Borg. Thus why soldier ants willingly go to their "deaths" to save the colony, seems a conundrum, until you realize that the soldier ant didn't "die" because it was never independantly "alive" to begin with, any more than some cells lining the bursa of your knee "care" if they die when you run top speed away from a fire, for example.
Maybe ants, cells and other "components" experience life in their own way? I haven't read the entire paper but the parts of the early pages that I can understand are eye-opening: scienceandscientist.org/papers/Cellular ... tience.pdf
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Harbal »

Do I think stepping on bugs is right or wrong.
It depends: If they're crawling up someones leg then it might not be such a good idea.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Supine »

The intent and objective perhaps matters as to whether it is unethical to stomp to death a single or mass of ants.

I would say the intent and objective, as painted in the description in post #1, indicates unethical actions and conscience.

When confronted with a violent engagement between a wasp and individual person, it is not unethical for the person to kill the wasp. But for a person, motivated purely by boredom, to entertain himself by destroying the life of a wasp presenting no burden or potential burden on his own well being, then that is unethical.

It may be of interest to note that the FBI has identified early childhood entertainment of torturing animals as something many adult serial killers have engaged in when they were children.

Destruction of other non-human life forms for entertainment may be indicative of other psychological things--revolving around or overlapping with moral formation in the individual.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Logicus »

It constantly amazes me that someone would come to a philosophy forum to ask questions like this. It's not like anyone is going to produce a definitive answer, either way.

Mark Twain once said, "The Good Lord created nothing in vain, but the fly comes damned close." But this is not about feelings or relative morality. The question is. " Do all creatures have a right to exist ", that is, are they necessary in the plan of the universe? Or, at least, our world? If they all have a purpose, then doing things to upset the progress of that purpose would have to be considered wrong. It works against a plan not of our devising. We just play our parts in the drama, and so do all other creatures.

I am reminded of a statement of a Hopi woman. She was picking corn from stalks in her meager corn patch when the photo-journalist with her pointed out that her harvest would be much greater if birds and rodents didn't have such easy access to her field. She replied, "They have to eat, too." This is more or less how I look at it.
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LuckyR
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by LuckyR »

Steve3007 wrote:These are Interesting points about the collective nature of species like ants and the relevance that this may have to questions about the morality of killing them. I think the main thing that they demonstrate is that questions about the morality of such things are un-answerable objectively because morality, it seems me, is entirely based on empathy and utility. i.e we make personal decisions about the morality of killing other creatures based on our empathy (or lack thereof) for them and their usefulness to us dead or alive.

But, LuckyR, I wonder why you said this:
Thus completely legal and moral, though perhaps not ethical.
Why moral but not ethical?
You are correct, I mistyped, it should read: "Thus completely legal and ethical, though perhaps not moral."
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Graeme M »

I look at it like this. I have a TV, a computer, a car, a rich home and family life, a job, money in the bank, good food, time to relax, the list goes on. The ant has its life. Who am I to take that away, just because I can?

The world is what it is and sometimes we have to kill to protect or defend ourselves. Otherwise, live and let live. My wasps buzz around on my patio and I watch them at times. if I get too close, they stop and stare. I know I am too close. My redback spiders keep to themselves, I try to avoid them. And mice, well I capture them and release them in a field. If I had redbacks in the house and I had small children, I would kill them. That's life.

We seem, luckily, to have minds superior to other creatures (so we kid ourselves, anyway) and can manipulate our environment to suit ourselves. We are the dominant species. We can do as we will with all other life. I believe there are some responsibilities that come with that. One doesn't need to be a selfish jerk unnecessarily. Is anyone so important that taking another creatures life for fun or entertainment or just because you can is OK? Personally, I don't think so.
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Re: Do you think stepping on bugs is right or wrong- why?

Post by Misty »

Logicus wrote:
Mark Twain once said, "The Good Lord created nothing in vain, but the fly comes damned close."
Mark Twain did not see a future when flies would be crucial to determine death timelines in crimes. What humans think is concrete truth today becomes obsolete in the future.
Things are not always as they appear; it's a matter of perception.

The eyes can only see what the mind has, is, or will be prepared to comprehend.

I am Lion, hear me ROAR! Meow.
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