So many thoughts at the moment.
I am interested in Peter Godfrey-Smith's distinction between different types of experiences. So,we might consider two: sensing and evaluating. Some creatures seem to have more of one than the other but the crucial point is that they are not the same. I guess part of what one attempts in meditation is to separate the two, which we humans don't usually do. Everything tends to have its 'I like it' or 'I don't like it' tag. But what would it be like for the evaluating to be stronger than the sensing? Maybe some of those of us with a-typical neurology are like that...
Bees have moods. But they, like other insects, are less bothered by pain... which may not mean they don't experience it but that when you have a short life with a lot to do, you just have to get on with it. If you might live longer, then healing matters. Mind you, wolves will keep running with a broken leg.
PGS doesn't think plants are sentient, but he knows that they are intensely sensitive. They process information to live, just like we animals do.
I am interested in the moral harms that humans may suffer through their failure to acknowledge the suffering of other beings. Disengagement and inattention. It's especially salient for slaughter-house workers and researchers. The former seem more likely to harm other humans. The latter... they have a more intellectual form of self-justification. They are self-selected and educated to be able to distance themselves from the suffering of animals.
When I was a child, I tied dead mice that the cats brought in to strings to play chase with the kittens. I wanted to know, when my dad caught an eel, what its heart looked like. I went through stages of distancing. I tried it out. I despised myself for it.
I think of the many ways we distance ourselves from animals and the harms that ensue. Through dressage! Horse-racing of course. Dog breeding - they are more prone to genetic diseases than any other species.
This world isn't big enough for us and them.
We, like all life, came from the water, the sea. We have nearly destroyed the sea, our mother, and our step-mother the land. And our father sky. We are worse than Oedipus... and where in mythology is the mother-killing penitent?
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