myrmepropagandist
Great video and questions. On the one hand I think that people can be too quick to dismiss the intelligence and complexity of insects. On the other hand I'm convinced that their experience of the world is radically different from our own. So, different analogies might fail.
Yet I think there is something like "frustration" in ants. Something builds up in an ant when she is trying to do a task and fails over & over. Something causes her to give up or change strategy.
myrmepropagandist
What are we really asking when we ask about the "subjective experience" of insects. I think at the root of this question is a moral quandary.
Do I need to respect this thing in some of the ways I respect people? In some of the ways I respect living things like cats and dogs?
Can this creature suffer? Could I be the cause? Is it monstrous to bring such harm into the world?
Here is my challenging idea: a creature need not be like us to be worthy of respect. What if we can respect the alien?
myrmepropagandist
Some ants can tell that people are actors in the world and react to us as such. Bull ants will track you with their excellent eyesight and chase you away from their nest. I think they have some model of us as a being or actor.
But with other ants I don't think they know I exist as another creature. I'm more like the weather, a giant force, a mountain.
But these same ants do see my forceps as a beast. And they have opinions about the tweezers as givers of food and attackers of the nest.
MostlyTato
@futurebird
Just because we cannot understand awareness in a creature that does not experience awareness in the same way we do, does not mean that awareness doesn't exist. I think It's as much a question of anthropic perspective as one of animal awareness.
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